The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas rejected on Tuesday any negotiations or release of hostages if Israel continues its attacks in the Gaza Strip, after Israeli forces announced the third phase of their offensive in the enclave.
During a press conference that took place in Beirut, capital of Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, one of the leaders of Hamas, minimized the new wave of Israeli attacks by guaranteeing that the armed wing of the movement is prepared to face them.
However, the representative noted that if Israel insists on continuing the constant bombing of the Gaza Strip, negotiations or the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners will not be possible.
In this sense, Osama Hamdan blamed the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the permanence of the hostages in captivity.
Hamdan also stressed that Netanyahu’s goal is not to eliminate Hamas, but rather the entire Palestinian people and their demands, stressing that both goals are “unattainable.”
“This is impossible,” reinforced the leader of the Palestinian Islamist group.
“This is not a sign of victory, but rather a sign of defeat and the fall of your government,” said Hamdan, referring to the new phase of the ground offensive by Israeli forces on the town of Khan Yunes, in the southern Gaza Strip. .
“Netanyahu and his war ring are sinking deeper and deeper into the Gaza quagmire,” Hamdan said, predicting that the current Israeli government will fall due to its actions in Gaza and that the prime minister will be tried as a war criminal.
The Hamas-supervised Health Ministry said today that an Israeli attack on a school housing Palestinians displaced by the war killed at least 25 people in Khan Yunes in the southern Gaza Strip.
Dozens of wounded people and bodies recovered from the rubble of the school were taken to the Nasser hospital in this city in the south of the Palestinian enclave, which in recent days has once again been the target of intense bombing carried out by the Israeli army.
On October 7, fighters from Hamas – classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel – carried out an attack on Israeli territory of unprecedented proportions since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, leaving more than 1,200 dead. . , mostly civilians, five thousand injured and around 240 hostages.
In retaliation, Israel declared a war to “eradicate” Hamas, which began with food, water, electricity and fuel cuts in the Gaza Strip and daily bombings, followed by a ground offensive.
The war between Israel and Hamas, which this Tuesday turned 60 days and continues to threaten to spread throughout the Middle East region, has so far killed more than 15,200 people in the Gaza Strip, most of them civilians, and more than 40,000 injured, according to the latest report from local authorities, confirmed by the UN, and around 1.9 million displaced, also according to the UN, plunging the poor Palestinian enclave into a serious humanitarian crisis.
The sides ceased hostilities for a week under a truce brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, but clashes returned last Friday after a failure to extend the agreement.
Source: TSF
