Military expert Brigadier General Elias Hanna said that the announcement by the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) that “most of the Israeli prisoners in the northern Gaza Brigade are missing” comes within the policy of counter-deterrence and a strategy of ambiguity.
Hanna explained – in his speech to Tel Aviv Tribune – that the scale and intensity of the Israeli military action in northern Gaza “affects the Palestinians, the resistance, the infrastructure, and the prisoners in the region.”
Hanna’s speech came as a comment on what a leading source in the Al-Qassam Brigades told Tel Aviv Tribune on Friday, saying, “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 Hamas movement, 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 government of Benjamin Netanyahu and the occupation army “full responsibility for the lives and fate of their prisoners.”
According to Hanna, the resistance adopted a strategy by distributing the detained Israeli prisoners to several places in various regions of the Gaza Strip to make things difficult for the occupation army.
The military expert cited what happened previously in Rafah in the south, when 6 Israeli prisoners were killed in one of the tunnels, as well as the Nuseirat operation (central Gaza Strip), when Israel recovered 4 of its prisoners in an operation during which more than 200 Palestinians were martyred, which prompted the resistance to impose new rules of engagement.
Hanna expressed his conviction that the Qassam announcement comes in the context of the ongoing negotiations in Qatar regarding a ceasefire and the conclusion of a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and the Hamas movement and its stages, in addition to increasing pressure in the Israeli street after the recent video of the Israeli soldier.
He concluded that the Qassam announcement also comes within the framework of emphasizing the need to reach an agreement that satisfies everyone instead of the current scene, especially with Israel’s failure to achieve the goals of the war through intense military pressure.
He stressed that “the resistance cannot lose more than it has lost, and it cannot concede,” describing the matter as “a matter of life and death” for it.
Regarding the connotations of the word “missing” in the Al-Qassam Declaration, the military expert said that it indicates the absence of communication between the military command and the captors responsible for the direct security of the detained prisoners.
Likewise, according to Hanna, the word “missing” falls within the principle of ambiguity and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to give secrets in order to be free from internal pressures, citing the resistance’s refusal to provide a list of the names of living prisoners 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.
On October 7, 2023, the Al-Qassam Brigades carried out a major attack on bases, barracks and settlements around the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of Israeli soldiers and officers.
The Qassams also captured at least 240 Israelis, more than 100 of whom were released during a temporary humanitarian truce in November 2023, while dozens of prisoners detained in Gaza were killed due to the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip for more than 15 months.
