Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 25.02.2025
The first phase of the deal between Israel and Hamas for a ceasefire and exchange of Prisoners of war is to expire on Saturday, March 1, after the agreed final exchange on Thursday of the bodies of four Israeli captives for the release of hundreds of Palestinians held by Israel. According to a report by Jeremy Scahill [i] of Drop Site News, Netanyahu wants to blow up the deal, Trump’s team is double speaking, and Hamas says it doesn’t need to run Gaza but won’t disappear nor be disarmed.
The war criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is sabotaging the internationally brokered deal that officially went into effect on January 19. Negotiations over the implementation of the second phase of the deal—that stipulates that the Zionist army withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt at the end of Phase 1—were scheduled to begin no later than February 3, but Netanyahu refused to authorize Israeli negotiators to begin talks. Instead, he traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet Donald Trump who refused to respect the arrest warrant for Netanyahu. At their joint press conference, Trump announced that he plans to seize Gaza as a U.S. territory and build it up as a “Middle East Riviera.” Since that visit, Netanyahu has escalated his threats to resume a full-scale war in Gaza while continuing to participate in weekly exchanges of Israeli prisoners of war for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
On Saturday, after Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions released six Israeli POW one of whom, Omer Shem-Tov, kissed two Qassam Brigades fighters on stage during the handover ceremony, after the Israeli captives were back in Israel, Netanyahu announced he was delaying the release of 620 Palestinians scheduled to be freed.
The next day, Israel announced that no more Palestinians would be released until Hamas agreed to end “ceremonies that demean the Israeli hostages’ dignity and the cynical use of the Israeli hostages for propaganda purposes.” Israel was also very angry over a video released by the Qassam Brigades, revealing that it had taken two other Israeli captives to the handover ceremony in Nuseirat on Saturday and filmed them from inside a van as they watched their countrymen released. On tape, the Israeli captives appealed to Netanyahu to comply with the terms of the ceasefire deal to ensure their release from Gaza.
Of the 620 slated to be freed this past Saturday, more than 400 are Palestinians from Gaza taken prisoner by Israel, including 23 children and one woman, along with 110 Palestinians serving life sentences or lengthy prison terms.
“By postponing the release of our Palestinian prisoners according to the Phase 1 ceasefire agreement, the enemy government endangers the agreement,” said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, in a statement.
“Israel’s delay in releasing detainees in the seventh batch of a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas constitutes “organized terrorism and abuse of prisoners,” the Palestinian Prisoner Society said Saturday.The group said it is “carried out by the occupation against the freed prisoners and their families, especially amid the bitter cold.”“The occupation has not left any tool of humiliation, abuse, or torture unused against the prisoners and their families,” it added.The Israeli army launched a series of raids in various areas of the West Bank, which included arrests and warnings to the families of prisoners who are expected to be released Saturday” [ii]
The Zionist prison service attacks the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and claims that “it is an association that takes care of the rights of terrorists and not of abductees“. These words come against the background of a letter sent by the association to the legal adviser to the government, in which there are serious claims about suspected abuse of prisoners before their release.
“In the letter, the association states that “According to the testimonies of the prisoners who were released in the deal and reports in the media, it appears that Palestinian prisoners who were released as part of the agreement experienced violence and humiliating treatment by prison guards during the days leading up to their release
The letter also says that “the health of the released prisoners is poor. It is evident that they have lost a lot of weight, many of them suffer from untreated skin diseases. Even the violence is evident in many of the prisoners who have been released.”
Hamas said on Sunday it would not resume indirect negotiations on the broader ceasefire deal with Israel until the Palestinian captives are freed, though it also said it is open to proposals from international mediators to resolve the impasse. If Israel does not release the Palestinians they were supposed to on Saturday, Hamas said, “All options are on the table,” including delaying Thursday’s scheduled return of the bodies of four Israelis taken to Gaza on October 7.
Netanyahu has used the return of the bodies of Israeli captive Shiri Bibas and her two small children to justify a potential end to the deal. Ariel and Kfir were 4 years and 9 months old when fighters from the Mujahideen Brigades—another Palestinian armed group—were captured on October 7. It has been clear for over a year that Netanyahu and his supporters have been using the family as an emotional weapon to stoke Israeli anger. Since November 2023, Hamas has maintained that the three were killed in an Israeli airstrike, but Israeli officials and media consistently implied they could be alive. After the bodies were returned, Israel claimed a combination of forensics and Israeli “intelligence” had determined the three were “murdered” in captivity. Netanyahu claimed, without evidence, that their captors had “strangled the tender children with their own hands.” No public evidence has been produced to support this allegation.
The so-called forensics evidence is based on the finding of the Zionist national forensic institute in Abu Kabir belonging to the Ministry of Health.
In 2005, the then chief pathologist Yehuda Hiss, director of Abu Kabir from 1988 to 2004, admitted, as part of a plea bargain, to the unauthorized removal of organs, bone and tissue from 125 bodies mostly Palestinians in the 1990s. The Attorney General of Israel dropped criminal charges against Hiss. He was fired in 2012 and replaced by Dr. Chen Kugel.
In December 2015, Dr. Maya Forman-Resnick, a forensic pathologist, gave an interview to the investigative program Uvda (“Fact”), where she repeated her previous accusation of the institute of falsifying scientific data and altering pathology reports to support the prosecution in criminal cases.
Dr Chen Kugel. also stated that the State Prosecutor’s Office pressures the institute to change its findings when they are not aligned with its interests, and that he had changed reports under pressure. He added, “Only in a totalitarian country does the state seek to turn the forensic institute into a rubber stamp for the prosecution’s caprices.”
Then, compounding an already intense situation, it emerged after forensic examination that the casket purportedly housing the body of Shiri Bibas did not actually contain her remains. Netanyahu accuses Hamas of an evil and cynical act of psychological terror and implies the group had deliberately given Israel the body of a Gazan woman. Hamas responded by saying it would investigate and soon announced that the return of the wrong body was a mistake due to the fact that Shiri Bibas’s remains had been kept with those of Palestinians killed in the same strike. Within 48 hours, her remains were located and handed over to the Red Cross.
“Some unfortunate mistakes may occur, especially since the Zionist bombing resulted in corpses of Israeli prisoners mixing with corpses of Palestinians, thousands of whom are still under the rubble,” said Naim. “We would like to remind the world that we received thousands of bodies from the Zionist enemy in blue bags without any identification on them and without any respect for their humanity, and we did not hear any condemnation of these crimes from international officials and the official western media did not care about Palestinian human rights.” [iii]
“Trump’s office was quick to endorse Israel’s refusal to free the Palestinian captives on Saturday. “Given Hamas’s barbaric treatment of the hostages, including the hideous parade of the Bibas children’s coffins through the streets of Gaza, Israel’s decision to delay the release of prisoners is an appropriate response,” said National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes. He added that Trump “is prepared to support Israel in whatever course of action it chooses regarding Hamas.” Netanyahu has also claimed he is in possession of a so-called side letter from Trump (and one from former President Joe Biden) assuring Israel it can resume full-scale war against Gaza if it determines the ceasefire is untenable” [iv]
But it will not be easy to resume the war at least until all the Israeli Pow will be returned and Hamas will not release all of them without Israel keeping to the agreement. The Israeli army is tired and Hamas has recruited many new fighters and is prepared to fight again if necessary. The families of the remaining Israelis POW demand to finalize the deal.
However, since it was signed, Netanyahu has told his cabinet time and again that he viewed the three-phase deal as only one phase, aimed at freeing as many Israeli captives as possible while preventing any efforts to force a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza or a reconstruction plan that includes Palestinians remaining in Gaza. On Sunday, Witkoff, the messenger of Trump acknowledged, “We have to get an extension of Phase 1.”
Under the deal signed by Israel, some 60,000 mobile homes and 200,000 tents were supposed to enter Gaza along with heavy equipment to clear rubble. Israel has almost entirely blocked these shipments since January.
Early last week, Hamas’s leader, Khalil Al-Hayya, said the group is prepared to negotiate a comprehensive deal for Phase 2 that would include the return of all Israeli captives held in Gaza “as one package,” but Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups demand Israel to completely withdraw all of its forces from the Gaza Strip and for international mediators, including the U.S., to certify a permanent truce-the end of the war.at the same time it is clear that Netanyahu wants no such deal with Hamas and claims that Trump “sees eye to eye with us on everything related to Gaza.”
Down with the Zionist monster!
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[i] Jeremy Scahill The Gaza “Ceasefire” Is at a Crucial Crossroads
[ii] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-s-delay-in-releasing-palestinian-prisoners-terrorism-and-abuse-rights-group/3490230
[iii] Jeremy Scahill The Gaza “Ceasefire” Is at a Crucial Crossroads
[iv] Ibid