Israel’s prime minister has warned Hamas it will end the ceasefire in Gaza and resume intense fighting if the Palestinian group “does not return our hostages by Saturday noon”.
Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered Israeli forces to amass inside and around Gaza in response to Hamas’s announcement that it was postponing freeing more hostages until further notice.
It was not clear whether Netanyahu was demanding the release of all 76 remaining hostages, or just the three scheduled to be freed this Saturday.
On Monday, Hamas said it would delay their release because Israel had violated the three-week-old ceasefire deal, including by blocking vital humanitarian aid – a claim Israel has denied.
The group’s decision prompted US President Donald Trump to propose that Israel cancel the agreement and “let hell break out” unless “all of the hostages” were returned by Saturday.
Hamas said in a statement earlier on Tuesday that the door was open for US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators to intervene and get the ceasefire deal – which stipulates the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners – back on track.
A senior Hamas official also dismissed what he called Trump’s “language of threats”.
The stand-off over the remaining hostages comes a week after Trump announced a controversial plan for the US to take over post-war Gaza and permanently relocate the two million Palestinians living there.
The Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Arab states categorically rejected the proposal, while the UN warned that any forced displacement would be “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.
The first phase of the ceasefire deal is supposed to last six weeks and see a total of 33 Israeli hostages exchanged for about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees from Gaza.
So far, 16 living hostages have been freed since the ceasefire took effect on 19 January. Hamas has also handed over five Thai hostages outside of the terms of the deal.
The remaining 17 Israeli hostages – two children, one woman, five men over the age of 50, and nine men under 50 – are supposed to be released over the next three weeks. Both sides have said eight of those hostages are dead, but only one has been named.
The deal has also seen Israeli forces withdraw from densely populated areas of Gaza, hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians return to their homes in the north, and hundreds of aid lorries allowed into the territory each day.
The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.
More than 48,210 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times, almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed, the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.
