Ceasefire Remains Only Solution To Freeing Isreali Hostages

A permanent ceasefire agreement remains the only solution to freeing Isreali hostages, dismissing the “language of threats” after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would “let hell break out” if they were not freed, Hamas official said.

Hamas has started releasing some hostages gradually under the ceasefire in place since January 19 but has postponed freeing any more until further notice, accusing Israel of violating the terms by continuing attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Trump, a close ally of Israel, said on Monday that Hamas should release all the hostages held by the militant group by midday on Saturday or he would propose cancelling the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel 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 October 7, 2023, that triggered the Gaza war.

Trump has enraged Palestinians and Arab leaders and upended decades of U.S. policy which endorsed a possible two-state solution in the region by trying to impose his vision of Gaza, which has been devastated by an Israeli military offensive and is short of food, water and shelter, and in need of foreign aid.

“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 (Israeli) prisoners. The language of threats has no value and only complicates matters,” senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.

Trump has said the United States should take over Gaza -, where many homes have been turned in piles of cement, dust and twisted metal after months of war – and move out its more than 2 million residents so that the Palestinian enclave can be turned into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

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.

Immense Tragedy

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 October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israeli communities and about 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages, Israeli tallies show.

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, Trump’s talk of resettling some 2 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 propagated by right-wing Israelis.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on X on Tuesday that a resumption of activities should be avoided at all costs because that would lead to “immense tragedy”.

Reuters/Ejiofor Ezeifeoma