The Hamas images of starving Jews, held hostage in tunnels below Gaza, digging their own graves or unable to even stand, provoked the condemnation that the militant group must surely have expected.
Along with its ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Hamas is now trying to trade food and medical help for Evyatar David, 24, and 21-year-old Rom Braslavski - along with 18 other living hostages - for an end to Israeli air strikes, and the opening of humanitarian corridors for Gaza’s 2.2 million people facing starvation.
They will not get what they want – and neither will Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister - because both are locked into mutually destructive strategies that punish the innocent while they pursue the conflict neither really wants to end.
David is 24, he’s had two birthdays since he was abducted from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023. A musician who planned to tour internationally, he was filmed in a Hamas tunnel digging a hole in the sand at his feet.
“Every day that passes, my body gets weaker and thinner,” he is recorded saying in the second of two videos released by Hamas. “It seems to me I am on the way to my own death. I am digging the grave in which I will be buried.”
He then collapses, holding the shovel, his head bowed.
Braslavski, a soldier working at the Nova festival close to the border with Gaza when Hamas led an operation that killed nearly 1,200 and in which over 250 people were kidnapped, was being held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
A video was also released of him at the weekend. “I can’t stand I can’t walk to the bathroom, I’ve run out of food and water,” he is filmed saying through tears. After this latest video, Hamas said it had lost contact with the PIJ.
In the footage which has been widely condemned, both men are clearly badly emaciated.
An assement by expert doctors from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum led by professor Ronit Endervelt said: “Evyatar’s current weight is estimated at approximately 40-45kg, a decrease of about 41 per cent from his original body weight of around 76kg, defined by the World Health Organization as severe thinness.“
Rom began captivity with a body mass at the lower limit and a weight of about 65kg and is therefore at high risk from weight loss. His current weight is estimated at around 37-47 kg, a decrease of approximately 31 per cent.”
The hostages’ supporters have long been critical of the Israeli government and Netanyahu for what they say has been the pursuit of the war with Hamas rather than focus on the release of hostages.
“I pray that Rom hasn't given up and still believes he's coming home. I pray that Rom hasn't accepted the devastating reality that maybe no one will come to rescue him and that he might die there,” his mother, Tami, said in a statement sent to The Independent.
Both men speak of how little they have been able to eat and drink.
It is assumed that Hamas is highlighting the starvation of Jewish Israelis held in Gaza to show the wider plight of the whole enclave, where aid organizations and the United Nations have said Israel is starving the population.
In its latest assessment of Gaza’s population, the UN’s World Food Programme said that more than one in three people in Gaza are now “going days at a time without eating”.
It added: “More than 500,000 people – nearly a quarter of Gaza’s population – are enduring famine-like conditions, while the remaining population is facing emergency levels of hunger.”
On Sunday, some 80 Gazans were killed, many trying to reach “aid hubs” run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Five more people died of starvation or malnutrition over the past 24 hours, Gaza’s health ministry said on Monday. The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from hunger to 180, including 93 children, since the war began, according to Reuters.
But Hamas is more likely to have calculated that it has no real interest in a ceasefire with Israel. While the conflict rages it has meaning and does not have to face a reckoning for the crimes of October 7 and for the inevitable Israeli response that the murder spree caused.
Israel had faced international condemnation for the humanitarian horrors it has caused in Gaza and its leaders, including Netanyahu, face indictments on war crimes by the Internation Criminal Court. Even staunch ally Donald Trump had been struck by the images of starving Palestinian children that emerged from the largely razed Mediterranean ghetto.
Netanyahu came under increasing pressure to end Israel’s campaign and open the gates of Gaza to food and other aid.
That would have been a relief for Gazans but terrible for Hamas. Historically, the group has favoured terror attacks over diplomacy - literally blowing up any signs of rapprochement between other Palestinian groups and Israel with bus bombs and market attacks.
A ceasefire and, worse still for Hamas, a commitment (as called for by Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) for renewed focus on a two-state solution, dividing the land from the river Jordan to the sea between Israel and Palestinians, would have been a disaster. Hamas wants the end of Israel – not a share of the land.
So releasing images of starving Jews that recall Belsen was sure to scupper any attempts at dragging Netanyahu towards a ceasefire.
On Monday he said he would call his security cabinet to meet to “continue to stand together and fight together to achieve all our war objectives: the defeat of the enemy, the release of our hostages, and the assurance that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel”.
He has pledged to - one day - annex the Israeli occupied West Bank. Several of his cabinet colleagues have called for the mass evacuation of Gaza’s population and its resettlement by Israelis.
He is facing bribery charges in court. The Israeli prime minister doesn’t want peace now because he would soon face an inquiry into how, or why, he ignored the intelligence warnings of Hamas preparations for the October 7 attack.
A ceasefire in Gaza now would expose Netanyahu, and Hamas, to political and personal risks they don’t ever want to ever face.
