But anyway, for what it’s worth:

Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip are mulling staging a coup against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, according to a report on the UK new site The Jewish Chronicle.

This comes amid deep divides over the terms of a ceasefire deal with Israel to end the fighting, the report said.

Sinwar is also reportedly surrounded with 22 living Israeli hostages, who are handcuffed and used as human shields against assassination attempts. Israel, it is claimed, has had several opportunities to eliminate him, but has restrained itself due to the risk of harming its captives. The report also mentioned that the rest of the hostages are held by smaller Palestinian terrorist factions.

Something of the sort may indeed be true. Or not. And “the rest of the hostages” – the living ones – constitutes an unknown number.

We did get a report from newly-rescued hostage Farhan al-Qadi:

Aryeh Zalmanovich, 86, was named Thursday as the Israeli hostage who died beside Farhan al-Qadi, the hostage who was rescued alive on Tuesday, while the two were held captive together in Gaza.

Zalmanovich, who was abducted from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught, died about five weeks into his captivity, according to al-Qadi.

Zalmanovich, a father of two and grandfather of five, was already known to have died in captivity, with Kibbutz Nir Oz announcing his death on December 1, 2023. The terror group had previously published a video in mid-November in which it showed Zalmanovich looking ill.

Following his rescue on Tuesday, al-Qadi asked to connect with Boaz Zalmanovich, the late hostage’s son, Boaz told Kan radio on Thursday. “It was very important” to al-Qadi to speak with the family, Boaz said, and they spoke briefly even as al-Qadi was being welcomed back to Rahat on Wednesday. “I hope we’ll have a more organized conversation” in the future, he said.

Al-Qadi told Boaz that he and Zalmanovich were taken to a hospital in southern Gaza, where they were kept for the first few weeks of the war. In captivity, Zalmanovich told al-Qadi about his family and community. …

Boaz said al-Qadi told him that there was a special connection between the two hostages.

“Dad was in a hospital the whole time, he wasn’t moved, and Farhan was with him for certain stages,” Boaz said.

“I understand from Farhan that they had a special bond. [Farhan] was also wounded, but he still helped take care of Dad — not in a medical way, more in terms of giving him support.” Boaz said that learning of al-Qadi’s support for Zalmanovich in captivity was “very important to us.” …

The conditions in which the hostages are being held are clearly not tenable “for a man of 86, or a man aged 20, or a baby…,” he said. “There is no [proper] care… Even if some of the hostages have had wounds bandaged or had surgery, that does not prevent their murder in captivity… in the tunnels or wherever they are. (Zalmanovich was beaten during his abduction, and was taken to Gaza without his glasses or his hearing aid, according to Channel 12.)

When you beat and then kidnap a man of 86 and he dies in captivity you have murdered him. But I believe Hamas is responsible for any deaths of hostages. It strikes me that it’s been almost a year now, which is mind-boggling.

I’m very happy for al-Qadi and his family. And here are a few details of the story of al-Qadi’s rescue:

Israeli special forces, acting on intelligence, were combing a network of tunnels in southern Gaza when they found Al-Qadi, two Israeli military officials told CNN. Al-Qadi was alone, without his Hamas captors, when Israeli forces found him, one of the officials said.

Al-Qadi is the eighth hostage to be rescued alive in Gaza by the Israeli military since the beginning of the war, in four separate operations – but he is the first to have been reclaimed alive from inside Hamas’ tunnel network underneath Gaza, the IDF told CNN.

“He was dead and is now brought back to life,” Al-Qadi’s brother, Juma’a, told CNN after Al-Qadi met family members at the Soroka Medical Center in Beer Sheva, where he is being cared for following his rescue. He added that his brother had not expected to come back alive.

“It was all tears. Tears of joy. What matters is that we saw him,” Juma’a said during an interview in the Bedouin village of Tarabin, in Israel’s Negev desert. …

Al-Qadi was discharged from hospital on Wednesday afternoon, the Soroka Medical Center said. In a press briefing, Al-Qadi expressed his gratitude to the soldiers who rescued him and the medical team at Soroka, the same hospital where he was born. Already making use of his new freedom, he said “I got shawarma at 2 a.m.” …

“It is hard for him to erase the things he saw there,” Juma’a said, adding that he too would never fully recover from losing his brother for nearly a year.

I can well believe it.

One of the things this story underlines is that yes, there are plenty of Arab citizens of Israel. They are Israelis, too:

[From the former mayor of Tarabin]: He told me that captivity was brutal. Constant darkness, did not see the light of day. He was treated like the rest of the hostages, like an Israeli in every way.

Like an Israeli in every way.

The article also says that al-Qadi’s captors may have fled at the approach of the Israeli soldiers in the tunnel. If so, the minders apparently weren’t so keen to martyr themselves:

Another one of Al-Qadi’s brothers, Abu Mohammad, suggested to CNN that his captors had fled when they heard Israeli troops approaching the tunnels, saying his brother had heard Hebrew voices and shouted out to communicate his whereabouts.

Asked by CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Tuesday if he believes Al-Qadi’s captors abandoned him, IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said that was “one of the options that are being looked at.”

It seems – and again, there’s no way to know if the details are true – that al-Qadi may have been found during a tunnel-clearing operation and that the troops had not already been aware of his presence through previous intelligence. But we don’t know – and may never know.