Hamas says hostages will not return alive as long as Israeli forces remain in Gaza

Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip “will not be returned alive” unless Israeli forces leave, a Hamas spokesperson said on Wednesday, highlighting the difficult situation in which the Israeli government finds itself: it is committed to freeing them. hostages, and continue the war and defeat Hamas.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under significant pressure to do whatever is necessary to recover the remaining hostages who are still alive — more than 100 of them, according to the government, are returning home safely. Yet public opinion polls show that most Israelis also support his stated goal of eliminating Hamas, which carried out the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, as a military force.

“We affirm that enemy prisoners will not be returned alive to their families,” Osama Hamdan, Hamas spokesperson, said at a news conference in Beirut, Lebanon, unless Israel meets the conditions set by Hamas, "the first of which is a complete cessation." of the aggression against Gaza. »

Analyzing the meaning of such statements is a challenge, in part because Hamas has not always followed through on its previous threats. Shortly after its incursion into Israel, Hamas declared that it would kill its captives taken to Gaza unless Israel ended its retaliatory bombing campaign; he did not carry out this threat, even though the bombings continued, and subsequently released more than 100 hostages, mainly in exchange for the release of Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

Il It is also unclear whether Mr. Hamdan was saying that the hostages, who have been in captivity for more than three months, would be killed or whether they would be detained indefinitely. He kept some of his kidnapped victims for years.

Mr. Hamdan rejected any talk of a deal that would see Hamas leaders in Gaza safely exiled, hostages freed and Israeli forces withdraw from the territory. Israeli media reported that something like this was being discussed between the governments of Qatar and Egypt.

“There is no initiative, as with the Qatari initiative, of Israeli withdrawal. and the departure of Hamas leaders,” Mr. Hamdan said, calling it an Israeli attempt to mislead the people.

He was equally dismissive toward Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who met with Middle East leaders to support a plan to govern and rebuild Gaza after the war. The plan calls for the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited power in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to also govern Gaza, ousting Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007.

"After Blinken's statement that many countries in the region have shown their willingness to invest in the future of Gaza, we affirm that the Palestinian people are the only ones to decide their future without interference from whoever it is,” Mr. Hamdan said.