Hamas has indefinitely postponed the release of Israeli hostages who were set to be freed from the Gaza Strip this weekend, a spokesman said on Monday, accusing Israel’s government of violating an already fragile cease-fire agreement.
The move threatens to derail both the six-week truce agreed to last month and the prospects for agreement on a lasting end to the war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was consulting with his top advisers on Monday night, and planned to move up a scheduled meeting with his security cabinet to Tuesday morning, a top official said.
Both Hamas and Israel have accused each other of violating various aspects of the cease-fire agreement, but they have continued to release Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners each week.
The statement on postponing the hostage release came shortly after the publication of a clip of a Fox News interview in which President Trump said Palestinians would not be allowed to return to Gaza under his plan to relocate the entire population — which Hamas and much of the international community have rejected emphatically.
Hours later, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Hazem Qasem, said “new demands are not acceptable.”
“We have an agreement to implement,” Mr. Qasem told a Saudi-based TV station, al-Hadath. “We are open to ideas regarding a new form of Palestinian government and administration of Gaza, but not to the deportation.”
While another Hamas spokesman, Abu Obeida, said on Monday that this weekend’s hostage exchange was on hold, mediators from Qatar and Egypt could work with Israeli and Hamas negotiators to find a resolution before then. In January, mediators helped the two parties overcome a separate dispute.
A key point of tension between Israel and Hamas is the fate of the second phase of the deal, which calls for a permanent end to the fighting, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of more hostages and prisoners.
Talks on the details were supposed to begin last week, but Israel dispatched officials to Qatar without a mandate to negotiate that part of the deal, according to four Israeli officials, an official from a mediating country and a diplomat briefed on the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the delicate cease-fire.
Mr. Netanyahu has suggested that he won’t pursue the second phase of the deal if it means the war will end. The war has fallen short of his vows to wipe out Hamas as a fighting force and prevent it from asserting control over Gaza. For its part, Hamas has insisted that the second phase include the end of the conflict.
In a statement on Telegram on Monday, Mr. Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, accused Israel of a host of violations of the cease-fire agreement, including delaying the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza, blocking the delivery of some humanitarian aid and opening fire on civilians.
In Gaza, after Hamas failed to release a female hostage who Israel said was to be freed in January under the agreement, Israel delayed the agreed return of displaced Palestinians to their homes in northern Gaza. But the exchange eventually went forward, and the hostage was released.
COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories, on Feb. 7 said that more than 12,000 trucks had entered Gaza since the agreement was set in place, “in accordance with the terms.”
Widespread anger over the conditions some of the hostages released so far — malnourished, buffeted by hostile crowds, paraded before cameras and, in some cases, made to read under duress statements of thanks to Hamas militants — has drawn accusations in Israel that Hamas was not complying with the cease-fire agreement.
A spokesman for Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, called Hamas’s announcement on Monday “a complete violation of the cease-fire agreement and the hostage release deal.”
He said he had directed Israel’s military “to prepare on highest alert for every possible scenario in Gaza.” Referring to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel that began the war, he added, “We will not allow for the reality of Oct. 7 to return.”
The initial, six-week cease-fire deal, which is scheduled to last until March 2, called for the release of 25 living hostages and the bodies of eight who were killed in exchange for the release of about 1,500 Palestinians from Israeli prisons. About half of the exchanges have been made.
It also required Israel’s military to withdraw from a key corridor bisecting Gaza that had prevented Palestinians had fled southward early in the war from returning to their homes in the northern part of the territory. The Israeli military completed its withdrawal from most of the area, known as the Netzarim Corridor, on Sunday in a step required to keep the deal moving forward.
But intermittent violence has continued, including what the civil defense agency in Gaza, part of the Hamas-run government, said was the killing on Sunday of three people and the wounding of several others by Israeli gunfire in eastern Gaza City.
The Israeli military said it had fired at several suspects in the northern Gaza Strip that day, including with warning shots, but did not provide information on casualties other than to say that “hits were identified.”
The post Hamas Postpones Release of More Hostages ‘Until Further Notice’ appeared first on New York Times.
