Hamas has reaffirmed that it will not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established, as the group released its second video in two days of an Israeli hostage.
Responding to one of the key Israeli demands to end the war in Gaza, Hamas – which has dominated the territory since 2007 – said it could not yield its right to “armed resistance” unless an “independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital” is established.
Indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel aimed at securing a 60-day ceasefire in the Gaza war and deal for the release of hostages ended last week in deadlock.
On Saturday, Hamas released a second video of hostage Evyatar David. In it, David is skeletally thin and is shown digging a hole, which, he says in the video, is for his own grave.
Israeli restrictions on the entry of goods and aid into Gaza have led to severe shortages of food and other essentials, stoking international demands for a ceasefire. UN-backed food security experts said this week that the “worst-case scenario of famine” is now playing out in Gaza.
Hamas has included this issue in their hostage videos, warning that the hostages are going hungry alongside their captors and that time is running out for a ceasefire.
In a statement, the family of David demanded that the aid that is now getting into Gaza thanks to renewed UN convoys and foreign airdrops must also reach their son.
“They are on the absolute brink of death,” his brother Ilay said at a rally in support of the hostages in Tel Aviv, where thousands gathered holding posters of those in captivity and chanted for their immediate release.
Of the 251 hostages taken during the Hamas attack, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy on Saturday told families of hostages that he was working with the Israeli government on a plan that would effectively end the war in Gaza.
Steve Witkoff, who arrived in Israel as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government faced global outcry over the devastation in Gaza and the starvation growing among its 2.2 million people, met the prime minister on Thursday. On Friday he visited an aid distribution site run by the Israel and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Global outrage has grown over Israel’s restrictions on aid and the deadly unrest surrounding the GHF sites, with daily reports of shootings at all four locations since the group took over aid distribution at the end of May. The UN says 859 Palestinians have been killed during that time in the vicinity of these sites, and more than 500 have been killed along the routes of food convoys.
Hospitals in Gaza say Israeli fire killed more than a dozen people on Saturday, eight of them while trying to get food.
Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza and says it is taking steps for more aid to reach its population, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, airdrops and announcing protected routes for aid convoys. UN agencies have said that airdrops of food are insufficient and that Israel must let in far more aid by land and quickly ease the access to it.
Seven Palestinians died of malnutrition-related causes over the past 24 hours, including a child, the territory’s health ministry said on Saturday. This brings the total deaths among children from causes related to malnutrition in Gaza to 93 since the war began.
The German government, traditionally a staunch ally of Israel, joined calls for Israel to deliver more aid on Saturday, saying that the current amount remains “very insufficient”.
France’s foreign minister also called for humanitarian aid to be supplied to the people of Gaza in massive quantities, while also denouncing as “despicable” videos of Israeli hostages held in Gaza posted by Hamas’s armed wing.
With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
