Hamas officials have said that the Israeli prime minister’s decision to conduct airstrikes on Gaza will be detrimental to the remaining hostages in captivity.
Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, says Israel is sacrificing the lives of its remaining captives in Palestine.
“Netanyahu’s decision to return to war is a decision to sacrifice the prisoners of the occupation and a death sentence against them,” al-Risheq said in a statement.
“The enemy will not achieve through war and destruction what it has failed to achieve through negotiations,” he added.
The Netanyahu government has signed the death warrant of the remaining captives, it added.
Meanwhile, the death toll as a result of the latest airstrikes has crossed 300, with casualties expected to rise further.
Reports suggest that many of the victims killed in the attacks were children and women.
According to Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Israel was never serious about extending the ceasefire in Gaza from day 1 when Trump said he was unsure that it would last longer.
Also read: Over 300 killed in new Israeli strikes against Hamas
We got another clue on day 16 of phase one of the ceasefire—was when negotiations for phase two were supposed to start and Israel flat-out refused to engage in those negotiations.
In the last two days, US envoy Steve Witkoff was talking about Hamas refusing the proposal-–actually, that’s not the correct way we should be framing this.
Political analyst Xavier Abu Eid expressed strong criticism over the United States' lacklustre approach to the Gaza ceasefire.
He said, that Arab countries have come out with a “very strong, unified voice” by backing Egypt’s plan for reconstructing Gaza, an effort at regional security that the Trump administration is now “sabotaging.”
“The Arab world, we have to say it, is an ally of the United States. No member of the Arab League wants to oppose the role of the United States in the world,” he said.
“But the messages that are being sent by the Trump administration are not those that someone who is a partner for regional stability and peace would be sending.”
Israel, despite its relentless bombing campaign and military invasion of Gaza, has failed to retrieve the captives from Hamas.
While the aerial bombings were carried out in south and north Gaza, the status of the captives remains questionable, with Hamas threatening to execute them if Israel continues its bombings in the enclave.
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