Israel reneged on a prisoner exchange over the weekend because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the manner in which Israelis were returned this weekend was a “violation.”
Hamas released six people from captivity on Saturday. One of them was not Jewish and was, according to The Times of Israel “released without fanfare.” The other five were handed over in a ceremony that Israel is calling offensive and degrading.
Israel was set to release 620 Palestinian prisoners, many of them women and children. But now Prime Minister Netanyahu says that has been delayed “until the next release of hostages is guaranteed, and without the degrading ceremonies.”
In this video, a hostage kisses the Hamas soldier as he leaves. Is that what Israel is calling degrading and Hamas propaganda? Is there a reason they don’t want us to see that? Hamas says that it will not accept any peace talks through mediators until the hostages are released.
Israel continues to decry the death of a mother and her two young sons, the Bibas family, whose bodies were returned last week. Hamas says that they were killed in Israeli air raids and Israel accuses Hamas of strangling them. Hamas says that they were holding a proper burial for the family in contrast with how Israel dumps dead Palestinians on Gaza borders, in mutilated heaps. Redacted has seen no convincing proof of either story.
The Bibas family has asked that no Israeli government official attend their funerals and repeatedly stated that they have no information for how the three died.
“Any publication of details (including references to the treatment of the bodies) is against the family’s wishes, and we ask that this be avoided,” they said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu told soldiers in the West Bank to prepare for an “extended stay.” This is the first time that Israeli military has sent tanks into the West bank in more than two decades.
US President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to the region this week with the aim of moving the ceasefire and hostage release forward.
