Hamas has stated it’s open to the Worldwide Committee of the Pink Cross (ICRC) delivering help to Israeli captives in Gaza after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated he requested the Geneva-based worldwide organisation to step in.
The statements from Hamas and Netanyahu got here after Palestinian teams final week launched movies displaying two emaciated Israeli captives held in Gaza, the place some 2 million Palestinians are struggling to outlive the Israeli-induced hunger disaster.
Netanyahu stated on Sunday he had spoken to Julian Larson, the top of the ICRC delegation to Israel, requesting the group’s “instant involvement” in offering meals and medical therapy to captives nonetheless held in Gaza.
In a put up on X, Netanyahu wrote in Hebrew that he instructed Larson that Hamas was propagating a “lie of hunger” within the enclave, however the actuality was that “systematic hunger is being carried out towards our hostages”.
Afterward Sunday, the spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, stated in a press release that Israeli captives held in Gaza “eat what our fighters and all our folks eat”.
“They won’t obtain any particular privilege amid the crime of hunger and siege,” the spokesman, referred to as Abu Obeida, stated.
However, he added, the group is “able to act positively and reply to any request from the Pink Cross to ship meals and drugs to enemy prisoners”.
To ensure that requests to help captives to be accepted, “humanitarian corridors have to be opened in a traditional and everlasting method for the passage of food and medicine to all our folks in all areas of the Gaza Strip”, Abu Obeida stated.
Israeli assaults “of all kinds should stop in the course of the receipt of packages for the prisoners”, he added.
The ICRC stated in a press release on Sunday that it was “appalled by the harrowing movies” of the captives held in Gaza and reiterated its name to be “granted entry to the hostages.”
“These movies are stark proof of the life-threatening situations by which the hostages are being held,” the ICRC stated within the assertion shared on X.
“We all know households watching these movies are horrified and heartbroken by the situations they see their family members held in,” the ICRC added.
On its web site, the ICRC says that “securing entry requires the cooperation of all events concerned”. The ICRC additionally says on its web site that it “has not been in a position to go to any Palestinian detainees held in Israeli locations of detention since 7 October 2023.”
In a separate assertion on Sunday, the ICRC stated it was additionally “appalled” {that a} Palestine Red Crescent Society staff member had been killed in a “clearly marked Palestine Pink Crescent Society (PRCS) constructing” in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.
The PRCS had earlier stated the assault was perpetrated by Israeli forces, however the ICRC assertion didn’t discuss with who was accountable.
A million girls and women ravenous
In the meantime, the households of Israeli captives held in Gaza stated on Sunday that Netanyahu’s continued insistence {that a} “army decision” was the one resolution was “a direct hazard to the lives of our sons, who dwell within the hell of tunnels and are threatened by hunger and instant demise”.
“For 22 months, the general public has been bought the phantasm that army stress will convey again the hostages, and immediately, even earlier than reaching a complete draft settlement, it’s stated that an settlement is futile,” the households stated in a press release.
There are about 50 captives nonetheless in Gaza. Fewer than half are believed to be nonetheless alive.
The most recent developments come because the Authorities Media Workplace in Gaza stated that Israeli authorities allowed simply 36 help vans to enter the Gaza Strip on Saturday, whereas 22,000 help vans proceed to sit down exterior the Strip ready to convey much-needed meals to Palestinians there.
The United Nations workplace in Geneva on Sunday additionally warned that 1 million girls and women in Gaza at the moment are ravenous.
In a put up on X, the UN stated: “A million. That’s what number of girls and women are ravenous in Gaza. This horrific scenario is unacceptable and should finish.
We proceed to demand the supply of lifesaving help for all girls and women, a right away ceasefire, and the discharge of all hostages.”
At the very least 175 folks, together with 93 kids, have now been confirmed lifeless from compelled hunger, in keeping with the territory’s Ministry of Well being, together with 17-year-old Atef Abu Khater, whose weight had dropped to simply 25kg (55lbs) earlier than he died on Saturday.
