It was hard to avoid a grim sense of déjà vu yesterday seeing the Hostages and Missing Families Forum’s anguished – and bitterly angry – reaction to the decision by Israel’s security cabinet to escalate 22 months of devastation and killing by taking control of Gaza City .

Warning that the Israeli government had now “sentenced the living hostages to death and the fallen hostages to disappearance”, the forum recalled that it had been almost exactly a year ago that the military had recovered the bodies of six hostages who could have been saved if Benjamin Netanyahu had not resisted a deal which could have released them.

For the deaths in August 2024 of those hostages exposed only too clearly the hollowness of the Israeli Prime Minister’s persistent claim – effectively repeated yesterday

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