The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, released a video on Saturday, April 26, which showed its fighters rescuing Israeli captives after the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) shelled the tunnel, where they were held in the besieged Gaza strip.
The fighters appear in the video digging through rubble inside the tunnel, before they pulled out the captives and gave them first aid. One fighter is also heard asking one of the rescued captives about another missing person. The video concludes with a message indicating that further details regarding the rescue operation will be published later.
Media outlets and analysts described the footage as the most dramatic in terms of the imminent risk Israeli captives have endured, throughout over 18 months of indiscriminate aerial aggression carried out by Israeli warplanes on Gaza.
Hamas’ video is a pressure tool as Israel continues to abort ceasefire proposals
As the Netanyahu administration continues to abort all proposals brought out by mediators of Gaza ceasefire talks, the timing of the video was perceived as a tool used by Hamas to exert maximum pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza strip.
Hamas announced on Saturday that it was open to a ceasefire agreement that stipulates ending the aggression on Gaza, releasing all Israeli captives and a five-year truce.
However, Israeli officials stated on Monday, April 28, that their government rejected Hamas’s proposal as it would allow the Palestinian resistance group to “rearm.”
The rejection provoked the ire of Israel’s Hostages and Missing Families Forum, who accused their government of having no plan to free Israeli captives.
Netanyahu reaffirms his opposition to ceasefire
Many released Israeli captives, families of current captives held in the besieged enclave, and opponents recurrently urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt the renewed aggression on Gaza and return the captives through negotiations.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu has always demonstrated his indifference to such calls, the last of which was during the JNS International Policy Summit that was held in occupied Jerusalem on Sunday, April 27.
In his speech, the head of the Israeli government reaffirmed his intention to continue the war in Gaza. “We’ve smashed the Iranian axis, but we didn’t finish the job. Remember, there’s still more to be done. We have to finish the war in Gaza, get our hostages back and destroy Hamas. Hamas will not be there and we’re not going to put the PA there,” Netanyahu stated, clarifying that he will not even allow the Palestinian Authority to rule post-war Gaza.
Emphasizing that he will never accept the establishment of a Palestinian state, Netanyahu said: “The notion that a Palestinian state will produce peace is folly, nothing more than folly.”
