Hamas has not denied Israel’s accusations that its men shot and killed the six hostages whose bodies were found in a Rafah tunnel in southern Gaza on Sunday to prevent them from being released alive. The six new coffins have drawn hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in the largest protests of the war as criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mounts. In his first public reaction since Israel recovered the bodies of the hostages, the spokesman for the fundamentalist group’s military wing in the Strip, Abu Obeida, acknowledged that they had given “new instructions” to the jailers of the hostages in case they were surrounded by Israeli troops, according to a message posted on social media.
He does not clarify whether this protocol includes the execution of the captives to prevent them from being rescued alive, but he implies that this is the case, arguing that they made the decision following what happened last June in the Nuseirat refugee camp. On June 9, the Israeli army managed to free four hostages during an operation in which the Israeli authorities themselves acknowledge that some 100 Gazans died, a figure that Hamas sources raised to 274.
“We tell everyone clearly that after the Nuseirat incident, we gave new instructions to the fighters in charge of guarding the prisoners on how to treat them if the occupation army approached the place of their detention,” Obeida said, blaming the Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for the deaths of the captives. “Netanyahu’s insistence on releasing the prisoners through military pressure, rather than sealing a deal, means that they will be returned to their families in shrouds. Their families must choose whether they want them dead or alive,” the spokesman added.
At the same time, Hamas has released a video featuring 24-year-old Eden Yerushalmi, one of the six hostages, all kidnapped during Hamas’s major attack on Israeli territory on October 7. Looking directly into the camera, the young woman calls on Netanyahu to do “whatever is necessary” to secure their release and calls on people to take to the streets to increase pressure on the country’s authorities.
“We are all suffering,” Yerushalmi says angrily, referring to the constant bombings and the fear they are experiencing. The hostage-taker even wonders if she is worth less than Gilad Shalit, the soldier also kidnapped in Gaza who returned home after being exchanged for a thousand Palestinian prisoners more than a decade ago.
Knowing what’s happening outside means understanding what’s going to happen inside, so don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
“This is not the way we thought it would end, Eden, my love,” her grief-stricken mother cried out as she lay in state before her daughter’s body draped in the national flag on Sunday afternoon. The recording released by Hamas is undated and Yerushalmi’s family has authorized the release of only part of it, the one in which, at the end, she appeals directly to her father, mother and sisters, to whom she sends a message of love.
Pressure for a ceasefire
This is not the first time that the fundamentalist group has released images of hostages in an attempt to pressure the authorities of the Jewish state to accept a ceasefire agreement that includes the release of the captives who remain in the Strip, around a hundred of whom approximately a third are already dead, according to estimates by the Israeli authorities.
Last April, Palestinian fundamentalists had already released a video similar to that of Yerushalmi, in which the youngest of the six hostages now dead appears. This is Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23 years old and with dual Israeli and American citizenship. The images showed him with the stump of his left arm after having lost his hand during the attack on October 7, when, in addition to killing some 1,200 people, Hamas kidnapped 250.
The recovery of these six bodies has caused a huge stir in Israel in the same week that marks 11 months of war with more than 40,000 dead in Gaza due to Israeli attacks. The streets of the main cities have been the scene of the largest demonstrations against Netanyahu in the entire conflict. The protests continue daily with events called mainly by the forum that welcomes the families of kidnapped and missing persons. The Israeli president appeared at a press conference late on Monday to try to blame Hamas for blocking an agreement. Netanyahu was accused on Wednesday by the Israeli press of lying and trying to stay in his position at all costs.
An entrenched Netanyahu – even against the advice of his Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant – insisted in a late Monday appearance that he would not, under any circumstances, withdraw his troops from the Philadelphia Corridor, which runs along the 14 kilometers that separate Gaza from Egypt, and where the only border crossing between those two territories is located. In new criticism launched against Netanyahu, opposition leader Yair Lapid accuses him of having turned Israel into a “frightened nation” in the midst of violence. “The only thing Netanyahu is concerned about is how to continue the war so that the government does not collapse. Instead of the government protecting the lives of citizens and soldiers, the lives of citizens and soldiers protect the government,” he said on Tuesday during a public address.
Follow all the international information at Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
#Hamas #warns #hostages #fate #military #pressure #continues #returned #shrouds
