Hamas said it was open to the International Red Cross Committee (ICRC), providing aid to the Israeli captives in Gaza after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had asked the Geneva International Organization.
The statements of Hamas and Netanyahu occurred after the Palestinian groups released videos showing two emaciated Israeli captives organized in Gaza last week, where some 2 million Palestinians find it difficult to survive the famine crisis induced by Israeli.
Netanyahu said on Sunday that he spoke to Julian Larson, the head of the ICRC delegation in Israel, asking for “immediate involvement” of the group in the supply of food and medical treatment with captives still held in Gaza.
In an article on X, Netanyahu wrote in Hebrew that he had told Larson that Hamas spread a “famine lie” in the enclave, but reality was that “systematic famine is underway against our hostages”.
Later Sunday, the spokesperson for the Qassam brigades, the Hamas armed wing, said in a statement that the Israeli captives held in Gaza “eat what our fighters and all our people eat”.
“They will not receive any special privilege in the middle of the famine and siege crime,” said the spokesperson, known as Abu Obeida.
But, he added, the group is “ready to act positively and respond to any request from the Red Cross to deliver food and medicines to enemy prisoners”.
In order for requests to help the captives to accept, “the humanitarian corridors must be opened in a normal and permanent way for the passage of food and medicine to all our people in all areas of the Gaza Strip,” said Abu Obeida.
Israeli attacks “of all forms must stop when receiving the prisoners’ packages,” he added.
The ICRC said in a statement on Sunday that it was “dismissed by heartbreaking videos” captives held in Gaza and reiterated its appeal to be “given to hostages”.
“These videos are striking evidence of the potentially deadly conditions in which the hostages are detained,” the ICRC said in the press release shared on X.
“We know that the families who watch these videos are horrified and the heart broken by the conditions in which they see their loved ones,” added the ICRC.
On its website, the ICRC says that “securing access requires cooperation of all parties involved”. The ICRC also indicates on its website that it “has not been able to visit the Palestinian prisoners who have taken place in places of Israeli detention since October 7, 2023.”
On Sunday, in a separate declaration, the ICRC said it was also “dismayed” that a member of the Palestine Red Crescent Society staff had been killed in a “company of the Croissant-Rouge Palestine clearly marked” in Khan Younis, in the south of Gaza.
The PRCs had previously declared that the attack had been perpetrated by Israeli forces, but the CICR declaration did not refer to whom was responsible.
A million hungry women and girls
Meanwhile, families of Israeli captives held in Gaza said on Sunday that Netanyahu’s continuing insistence that a “military resolution” was the only solution was “a direct danger to the life of our sons, who live in the hell of tunnels and are threatened by famine and immediate death”.
“For 22 months, the public was sold to the illusion that military pressure will bring the hostages back, and today, before even reaching a complete agreement of agreement, it is said that an agreement is futile,” families said in a statement.
There are still around fifty captives in Gaza. Less than half would still be alive.
The latest developments are involved while the government’s media office in Gaza said that the Israeli authorities had only allowed 36 rescue trucks to enter the Gaza Strip on Saturday, while 22,000 rescue trucks continue to sit outside the band while waiting to bring essential dishes to the Palestinians.
On Sunday, the United Nations Bureau in Geneva also warned that 1 million women and girls in Gaza are now hungry.
In an article on X, the UN said: “One million. How many women and girls are starving in Gaza. This horrible situation is unacceptable and must end.
We continue to demand the delivery of rescue aid for all women and girls, an immediate cease-fire and the release of all hostages. »»
At least 175 people, including 93 children, have now been confirmed dead in forced famine, according to the Ministry of Health of the Territory, including Atef Khater, 17, whose weight had fallen at only 25 kg (55 pounds) before his death on Saturday.
