The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mirjana Spoljaric, is scheduled to visit Israel on Thursday.
During the visit, Spoljaric is expected to meet with President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, as well as with families of hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza.
Netanyahu is expected to demand that Spoljaric make efforts to ensure that the ICRC visits the hostages who are still held in Gaza.
Spoljaric visited the Gaza Strip last week, where she was supposed to coordinate visits by Red Cross personnel to hostages who are being held by Hamas.
However, in a video she released after the visit, Spoljaric barely mentioned the hostages and mostly spoke about the plight of Gazan residents.
Only towards the end of the nearly two-minute video, did the Red Cross chief briefly mentioned the hostages abducted by Hamas during its October 7 attack on Israel.
“We have to protect the rights of hostages. The ICRC will do its utmost to help alleviate and reduce the suffering but we can’t do this alone,” she said.
Spoljaric’s visit to Gaza follows her recent visit to Qatar where she met with the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh.
To date, the Red Cross has not been permitted to visit the hostages who have been held by Hamas in Gaza since its deadly terrorist attack against Israel on October 7.
The ceasefire agreement which saw Hamas release some of the hostages it was holding included a clause which was supposed to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the hostages who remain in captivity. This, however, did not happen.