Ceasefire is only way to bring Israeli hostages home, Hamas official says
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A demonstrator calling for the release of hostages held captive in Gaza, in front of the Israeli Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv on Feb 8.
PHOTO: AFP
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CAIRO - A Hamas official said on Feb 11 that Israeli hostages can be brought home from Gaza only if a fragile ceasefire is respected, dismissing the “language of threats” after US President Donald Trump said he would “let hell break out” if they were not freed.
Hamas has started releasing some hostages gradually under the ceasefire in place since Jan 19, but has postponed freeing any more until further notice, accusing Israel of violating the terms by continuing attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Mr Trump, a close ally of Israel, said on Feb 10 that Hamas should release all the hostages held by the militant group by midday on Feb 15, or he would propose cancelling the Israel-Hamas ceasefire
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country remained determined to get all the hostages back.
“We will continue to take determined and ruthless action until we return all of our hostages – the living and the deceased,” he said in a statement mourning Israeli Shlomo Mansour after the military confirmed he was killed during the Hamas attack on Oct 7, 2023, that triggered the Gaza war.
Mr Trump has enraged Palestinians and Arab leaders and upended decades of US policy, which endorsed a possible two-state solution in the region, by trying to impose his vision of Gaza
“Trump must remember that there is an agreement that must be respected by both parties, and this is the only way to bring back the prisoners. The language of threats has no value and only complicates matters,” senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
Mr Trump has said the US should take over Gaza – where many homes have been turned into piles of cement, dust and twisted metal after months of war – and move out its more than two million residents, so that the Palestinian enclave can be turned into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
Mr Trump is set to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah on Feb 11 for what is likely to be a tense encounter following the US President’s Gaza redevelopment idea, including a threat to cut aid to the US-allied Arab country if it refuses to resettle Palestinians.
The forcible displacement of a population under military occupation is a war crime banned by the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
Palestinians fear a repeat of what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven out during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel’s creation. Israel denies they were forced out.
“We have to issue an ultimatum to Hamas. Cut off electricity and water, stop humanitarian aid. To open the gates of hell,” far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said at a conference of the Institute for Ultra-Orthodox Strategy and Policy.
The Gaza war, launched after the Hamas attacks on Israeli territory in October 2023,
More than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in the last 16 months, the Gaza Health Ministry says, and nearly all of Gaza’s population has been internally displaced by the conflict, which has caused a hunger crisis.
Some 1,200 people were killed in the 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israeli communities and about 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages, Israeli tallies show.
Mr Trump’s ideas, which also include a threat to cut aid to Egypt if it does not take in Palestinians, have introduced new complexity into a sensitive and explosive regional dynamic, including the shaky ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
For Jordan, Mr Trump’s talk of resettling some two million Gazans comes dangerously close to its nightmare of a mass expulsion of Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank, echoing a vision of Jordan as an alternative Palestinian home that has long been propagated by right-wing Israelis.
Amman’s concern is being amplified by a surge in violence on its border with the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Palestinian hopes of statehood are being rapidly eroded by expanding Jewish settlement.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on X on Feb 11 that a resumption of hostilities should be avoided at all costs because that would lead to “immense tragedy”.
“I appeal to Hamas to proceed with the planned liberation of hostages. Both sides must fully abide by their commitments in the ceasefire agreement and resume serious negotiations,” he said.
The idea of a two-state solution has faded since 2014, when Palestinian and Israeli attempts at peacemaking in one of the most volatile and violent regions in the world stalled. REUTERS
