00:00What more can you tell us about that visit?
00:05Well, I can tell you that for now, the visit has not produced results and has left a lot of confusion.
00:13The family members of hostages still held in Gaza, including some whose truly horrific images, hostages whose images were posted in the last 24 hours or so by the Islamic Jihad in Gaza, left the meeting with Whitcoff deeply discouraged.
00:34And feeling that the White House is choosing to follow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's line, rather than imposing its own view that the war should be ended on the Israeli government.
00:48Steve Whitcoff told the families that Prime Minister Netanyahu has made a decision to end the war, something Netanyahu has absolutely not told the Israeli public, to the contrary.
01:00And he also told the families that Hamas had agreed to lay down its arms.
01:06It didn't take more than a couple of hours for Hamas to issue a statement just around half an hour ago, saying that that was not the case and that they retain the right to bear arms as long as the occupation lasts and until there is a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem.
01:23So we seem to still be treading water.
01:26Now, Noga, as you mentioned, there's been a lot of talk, you know, negotiations, indirect negotiations sort of ended in a deadlock a week ago.
01:53It seems there's growing desperation on all sides and not much is getting accomplished, is it?
01:59That's exactly right.
02:03And it's really, I think, creating a feeling of airlessness, certainly in Gaza, but more widely in all of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, where violence is also surging.
02:19In Gaza, where citizens continue to die every single day in Israel, where missiles continue to be launched from Yemen and on occasion from Gaza.
02:32And where there is simply a feeling of suffocation among the general public that does not support the government's insistence on continuing to wage war and that feels desperation at the fate of Israeli citizens.
02:4950 of them, 50 of them or so, who are still being held hostage, at least 20 are thought to still be alive.
02:57But from the images that have been distributed by the Islamic Jihad, it doesn't seem like they have a long time to live.
03:04The pictures that we saw recently here involved two very young men, age 21, 22.
03:10And so you're hearing really calls of desperation in Gaza, people saying they have no way to get food without endangering their lives.
03:20And in Israel, feeling that the country is simply being torn apart by the government's refusal to respond to any kind of pressure that's being put on it.
03:31Noga, thank you so much for updating us.
03:34That's France 24's Jerusalem correspondent, Noga Tornopolski.
