our correspondent yogita limaya willjoin us from ayodya tonight. and we will also call in on the weather centre. storm isha causing wide spread travel problems across europe today. another storm, jocelyn, is right behind it. good evening. there is a split within the israeli war cabinet. there are those, like prime minister benjamin netenhayu, who think only military pressure will end hamas and bring home the 130 hostages they are holding. but there are others in the cabinet, including senior military figures, who say it is impossible to return them alive without an agreement. and in the middle of that are the families. today those tensions spilt into the open, as families of the missing barged past security and stormed a finance meeting in the knesset. shame on you, they shouted at ministers. we won t let you breathe, said one, until our children are brought home. the protest reflects growing dissent in israel, about the war with hamas, now in its fourth month. and the
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retake control of the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt, expanding Israel's mission to neutralize Hamas in a conflict it says it expects to last for months. "The war is at its height," Netanyahu told reporters on Saturday of the fighting since Oct. 7 when the Palestinian militant group Hamas and its allies infiltrated Israel, killing 1,200 people and capturing 240 hostages. He said the Philadelphi Corridor buffer zone that runs along Gaza's border with Egypt must be in Israeli hands.
Israel has said a Palestinian teenager who was among the youngest prisoners and detainees it freed under a Gaza truce cannot return to his former school in Jerusalem until at least mid-January after a period of probation. Salaymeh was summarily released from pre-trial detention, along with scores of other Palestinian teens, during a Nov 24-Dec 1 truce under which Israel recovered almost half of the 240 hostages held by Palestinian Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. Israeli control is resented by many fellow Palestinians of Jerusalem, who want the east of the city as capital of their hoped-for future state.