Hamas has indefinitely postponed the discharge of Israeli hostages who have been set to be free of the Gaza Strip this weekend, a spokesman stated on Monday, accusing Israel’s authorities of violating an already fragile cease-fire settlement.
The transfer threatens to derail each the six-week truce agreed to final month and the prospects for settlement on a long-lasting finish to the battle. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was consulting along with his high advisers on Monday night time, and deliberate to maneuver up a scheduled assembly along with his safety cupboard to Tuesday morning, a high official stated.
Each Hamas and Israel have accused one another of violating varied elements of the cease-fire settlement, however they’ve continued to launch Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners every week.
The assertion on suspending the hostage launch got here shortly after the publication of a clip of a Fox Information interview wherein President Trump stated Palestinians wouldn’t be allowed to return to Gaza underneath his plan to relocate the whole inhabitants — which Hamas and far of the worldwide group have rejected emphatically.
Hours later, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Hazem Qasem, stated “new calls for usually are not acceptable.”
“We now have an settlement to implement,” Mr. Qasem advised a Saudi-based TV station, al-Hadath. “We’re open to concepts relating to a brand new type of Palestinian authorities and administration of Gaza, however to not the deportation.”
Whereas one other Hamas spokesman, Abu Obeida, stated on Monday that this weekend’s hostage change was on maintain, mediators from Qatar and Egypt may work with Israeli and Hamas negotiators to discover a decision earlier than then. In January, mediators helped the 2 events overcome a separate dispute.
On one other entrance, the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, ordered adjustments to the coverage of paying the households of Palestinians who’re jailed or killed by Israel, even these concerned in violent acts — a follow that has lengthy been denounced by Israel and america. The language of Mr. Abbas’s decree is opaque, leaving it unclear how such funds would change.
In Gaza, a key level of pressure between Israel and Hamas is the destiny of the second section of the deal, which requires a everlasting finish to the combating, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the discharge of extra hostages and prisoners.
Talks on the main points have been supposed to start final week, however Israel dispatched officers to Qatar with out a mandate to barter that a part of the deal, in line with 4 Israeli officers, an official from a mediating nation and a diplomat briefed on the talks, who spoke on situation of anonymity to debate the fragile cease-fire.
Mr. Netanyahu has steered that he gained’t pursue the second section of the deal if it means the battle will finish. The battle has fallen wanting his vows to wipe out Hamas as a combating drive and stop it from asserting management over Gaza. For its half, Hamas has insisted that the second section embody the tip of the battle.
In an announcement on Telegram on Monday, Mr. Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas’s navy wing, accused Israel of a number of violations of the cease-fire settlement, together with delaying the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza, blocking the supply of some humanitarian support and opening hearth on civilians.
In Gaza, after Hamas didn’t launch a feminine hostage who Israel stated was to be freed in January underneath the settlement, Israel delayed the agreed return of displaced Palestinians to their houses in northern Gaza. However the change ultimately went ahead, and the hostage was launched.
COGAT, the Israeli company that oversees coverage for the Palestinian territories, on Feb. 7 stated that greater than 12,000 vehicles had entered Gaza because the settlement was set in place, “in accordance with the phrases.”
Widespread anger over the circumstances of among the hostages launched to date — malnourished, buffeted by hostile crowds, paraded earlier than cameras and, in some instances, made to learn underneath duress statements of because of Hamas militants — has drawn accusations in Israel that Hamas was not complying with the cease-fire settlement.
A spokesman for Israel’s protection minister, Israel Katz, known as Hamas’s announcement on Monday “an entire violation of the cease-fire settlement and the hostage launch deal.”
He stated he had directed Israel’s navy “to arrange on highest alert for each potential situation in Gaza.” Referring to the 2023 Hamas-led assault on Israel that started the battle, he added, “We won’t permit for the fact of Oct. 7 to return.”
The preliminary, six-week cease-fire deal, which is scheduled to final till March 2, known as for the discharge of 25 residing hostages and the our bodies of eight who have been killed in change for the discharge of about 1,500 Palestinians from Israeli prisons. About half of the exchanges have been made.
It additionally required Israel’s navy to withdraw from a key hall bisecting Gaza that had prevented Palestinians who had fled south early within the battle from returning to their houses within the northern a part of the territory. The Israeli navy accomplished its withdrawal from many of the space, often called the Netzarim Hall, on Sunday in a step required to maintain the deal shifting ahead.
However intermittent violence has continued, together with what the civil protection company in Gaza, a part of the Hamas-run authorities, stated was the killing on Sunday of three folks and the wounding of a number of others by Israeli gunfire in jap Gaza Metropolis.
The Israeli navy stated it had fired at a number of suspects within the northern Gaza Strip that day, together with with warning photographs, however didn’t present data on casualties apart from to say that “hits have been recognized.”