On Friday, the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, broadcast a video message to the families of Israeli prisoners in the Gaza Strip, in which it held Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responsible for the killing of their detained relatives.
The message was addressed to the families of the occupation prisoners, stating: “Your leadership is killing your children with determination and determination.”
The video message included a previous speech by Netanyahu in which he affirmed the continuation of working forcefully to return the detained prisoners to their families, describing this task as one of his highest priorities and highest obligations.
This was followed by scenes of the intense Israeli bombing on various areas of the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the current Israeli war, then the sounds of Israeli prisoners who appeared to have been injured or killed during the Israeli raids and their captors’ attempts to rescue or extract them.
The Al-Quds Brigades’ video broadcast coincides with a leading source in the Al-Qassam Brigades telling Al-Jazeera on Friday that “most of the enemy prisoners in the northern Gaza Brigade are missing due to the Zionist aggression.”
The leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), added that the brigades had repeatedly warned against reaching this outcome in the areas of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, again holding the Netanyahu government and the occupation army “full responsibility for the lives and fate of their prisoners.”
The video broadcast also coincides with the refusal of the family of the prisoner whose body was removed from Gaza, Hamza al-Zayyadna, to give the Israeli Minister of the Interior a speech during his funeral.
In this context, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said that Al-Zayadna’s family says that “there was an opportunity to return the two kidnapped people alive, but they were killed as a result of incorrect decisions.”
More than once, the prisoner exchange negotiations between Israel and the Hamas movement, which are being conducted with Qatari-Egyptian-American mediation, have faltered due to new conditions proposed by Netanyahu or his retreat from previous understandings, at a time when Israel continues unabated in its genocidal war on Gaza.
The opposition and families of Israeli prisoners accuse Netanyahu of obstructing reaching an agreement to maintain his position, as extremist ministers – including Ministers of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – threaten to leave and topple the government if it accepts ending the war in Gaza.
On April 23, Al-Qassam spokesman Abu Ubaida said, “Ron Arad’s scenario may be the most likely to be repeated with the enemy prisoners in Gaza,” stressing that “the so-called military pressure will only push us to stick to our positions and preserve the rights of our people and not neglect them.” .
Ron Arad is an Israeli pilot whose plane crashed in southern Lebanon in October 1986, and his fate remains unknown since that date.