Hamas on Sunday threatened to kill all of its remaining hostages if demands such as more aid for Gaza and prisoner exchanges were not met, after suffering repeated losses in its battle with Israel.
The Palestinian terror group is still holding the bodies of 20 hostages who died in captivity, Israel said over the weekend.
Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, claimed Sunday that not another single kidnap victim will leave Gaza alive unless Israel agrees to all its demands in negotiations that broke down at the start of December. At least some of those demands have been for more aid for Gaza residents and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners.
“Neither the fascist enemy and its arrogant leadership… nor its supporters… can take their prisoners alive without an exchange and negotiation and meeting the demands of the resistance,” Obeida said in a televised broadcast.
The ultimatum came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that of the 137 hostages believed to still be in Hamas custody, 20 are dead. More than 100 were freed in an aid and prisoner pact last month.
Hamas had previously accused Israel of killing hostages during its relentless airstrike campaigns in northern Gaza, with the allegations reiterated in a Hamas video by hostage Yarden Bibas, who blamed Netanyahu for the death of his wife and two young boys.
Israel slammed the claims as propaganda, and it has accused the terror group of stooping so low as to even refuse to hand over the bodies of its dead.
Hamas is allegedly trying to leverage the corpses in the stalled hostage exchange negotiations in hopes of freeing more Palestinians from Israeli prisons and seeing more aid trucks arrive in Gaza.
The terrorists had freed more than 100 hostages during a seven-day ceasefire last month, but after the two sides failed to agree on an eighth wave of exchanges, the war resumed Dec. 1.
Since the end of the cease-fire, 3,500 Hamas targets have been taken out in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces said Sunday, with more than 22,000 targets destroyed since the war began Oct. 7 with Hamas’ deadly sneak attack on Israel.
A senior IDF official claimed that with Israel’s latest advancements in northern and southern Gaza, there are now “signs of Hamas breaking,” the Times of Israel reports.
“The extent of the destruction and damage creates command and control problems [for Hamas]. There are areas in the Gaza Strip that Hamas no longer controls militarily,” the official said.
But despite Israel’s latest victories across Gaza, the official said fighting will only intensify as Hamas continues to hold out for as long as it can.
After nearly two months of warfare in northern Gaza, including raiding and destroying multiple headquarters, the IDF is now focusing its bombardments around Khan Younis, the largest city in the south.
There has been heavy fighting reported in the center of the city, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled to after being evacuated from the north.
During the fighting, the IDF encircled the northern Gaza home of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the man believed to have orchestrated the Oct. 7 massacre that killed more than 1,200 Israelis.
But Sinwar had already allegedly escaped south by hiding out in an evacuating humanitarian vehicle and is now believed to be in one of the tunnels in Khan Younis that is part of Hamas’ extensive underground network, the Times of Israel reported.
Along with taking out half of Hamas’ estimated 24 battalion leaders, the Israeli military estimates that about 7,000 Hamas terrorists have been killed during the war.
Gaza’s Hamas-linked Health Ministry believes the war has claimed more than 17,700 victims in all, the majority women and children, with an IDF spokesman previously describing the ratio of terrorist-to-civilian killed as “positive.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has urged the Jewish state to do more to avoid the deaths of civilians in the Palestinian enclave, acknowledging that not enough has been done by America’s staunch ally.
“The intent is there, but the results are not always manifesting themselves,” Blinken told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Blinken said Israel needs to conduct lengthier pauses in the war to allow civilians to escape and for more aid to arrive to the nearly 2 million Palestinians who have been displaced since the conflict began.
Despite the concerns over Israel’s handling of the war, Blinken noted that the Jewish state has the final say on how it will conduct the fighting and when it will end.
“We have these discussions with Israel, including about the duration as well as how it is prosecuting this campaign against Hamas,” he said. “These are decisions for Israel to make.
“But Hamas has decisions to make, too. It could get out from hiding behind civilians tomorrow. It could put down its arms tomorrow. It could surrender tomorrow, and this would be over,” the US’s top diplomat said.
Blinken also defended America’s decision to bypass a congressional vote to sell nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition for Israel.
The secretary of state said the sale was only a small amount of what Israel needs as he called on Congress to pass a $100 billion aid bill for Israel, Ukraine and other national security necessities.
With Post wires