Hamas official says he wouldn’t have gone ahead with Oct 7 in hindsight
A Hamas official has made an incredible statement of regret over the October 7 terror attack as the militant group weighs putting an end to the cruel spectacle accompanying hostage handovers.
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A senior Hamas official has made a stunning admission about his views on the October 7 massacre.
The head of the terror group’s foreign relations office, Mousa Abu Marzouk, told The New York Times he would not have supported the attack if, in hindsight, he knew the devastating toll it would have on Gaza.
“If it was expected that what happened would happen, there wouldn’t have been Oct 7,” Marzouk said.
The 74-year-old also suggested there may be a willingness to negotiate at least a partial disarmament of the group in Gaza – a departure from Hamas usual line.
His comments come as Hamas is contemplating the imminent release of the bodies of two dead hostages.
The release of four deceased hostages, originally slated for Thursday, could instead take place quietly across two separate handovers earlier this week senior Israeli officials have told their local media outlets.
Israel is refusing to hand over the promised 602 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the bodies unless they receive a guarantee there will not be a repeat of the spectacle which has accompanied previous hostage handovers.
Israel’s Channel 12 quotes a source close to mediators who said they are working on a deal which involves two separate exchanges with 301 prisoners swapped for two hostage bodies on each occasion.
The proposed location for the body exchange is said to be Egypt where it would be done in private. as opposed to previous public swaps.
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ISRAEL ‘ATTEMPTING TO ANNEX WEST BANK’: HAMAS
Palestinian militants said that an unusual deployment of Israeli tanks in the occupied West Bank, part of a major offensive that has displaced tens of thousands, may be a step toward annexation.
Israeli leaders have repeatedly pledged to annex at least parts of the West Bank, which has been occupied since 1967, but any such proposal has been met with strong opposition from Palestinians and much of the international community.
In a weeks-long military operation in the north of the territory, launched around the time a truce took hold in the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces looking for militants have cleared three refugee camps and deployed tanks in Jenin.
Militant group Islamic Jihad said that the mass evacuations and first deployment of Israeli tanks in the territory since the early 2000s “confirms the occupation’s plans to annex the West Bank by force”.
The group, which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza and has a strong presence in the northern West Bank, denounced “a new act of aggression” which it said was “aimed at uprooting our people from their land”.
Throughout the Gaza war, violence in the West Bank – a separate Palestinian territory – has soared, as have calls to annex it, most notably by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Since the start of the war in October 2023, Israeli troops or settler attacks have killed at least 900 Palestinians, including many militants, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Palestinian attacks and clashes during military raids have killed at least 32 Israelis over the same period, according to official figures.
UN chief Antonio Guterres on Monday rejected “calls for annexation” and said he was “gravely concerned by the rising violence in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and other violations”.
Israel said its troops would remain for many months in the evacuated refugee camps in the northern West Bank – Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams – aiming to “prevent the return of residents and the resurgence of terrorism”, according to Defence Minister Israel Katz.
He put the number of displaced Palestinians at 40,000, the same figure provided by the United Nations which said the offensive had so far killed at least 51 Palestinians including seven children, and three Israeli soldiers.
Islamic Jihad accused Israel of attempting to consolidate “military domination by creating settler corridors that reinforce the separation of West Bank cities and their camps”.
The West Bank, excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, is home to around three million Palestinian as well as nearly half a million Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law.
Israeli forces said Monday they apprehended two suspects over “an attack on Israeli civilians” last weekend and six “wanted individuals” in Jenin and other areas of the northern West Bank.
In both Tulkarem and Jenin, the army has demolished dozens of homes with explosives, opening up new access routes into the densely built camps.
Armoured bulldozers have wreaked havoc, upturning tarmac, cutting water pipes and tearing down roadside facades.
The military says the bulldozers are meant to clear roads of explosives.
ISRAEL PREPARED TO ‘RESUME FIGHTING’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is prepared to resume fighting against Hamas after the Palestinian group accused it of endangering a five-week-old Gaza truce by halting the release of more than 600 prisoners.
Mr Netanyahu, speaking at a military ceremony a day after Israel stalled the release of the Palestinian prisoners in exchange for six hostages freed by Hamas from Gaza, vowed to achieve the war’s objectives in negotiations “or by other means”.
“We are prepared to resume intense fighting at any moment,” he said.
Since the ceasefire began on January 19, Gaza militants have released 25 living Israeli hostages in staged ceremonies, often flanked by masked gunmen and forced to speak.
After six hostages were freed on the weekend, Israel put off the planned release of more than 600 Palestinians, citing what Mr Netanyahu called “humiliating ceremonies” in Gaza.
With tensions again surging over the deal, Israel announced an expansion of military operations against militants in the occupied West Bank, a separate Palestinian territory where violence has soared throughout the Gaza war.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has facilitated the hostage-prisoner exchanges, has previously appealed to “all parties” for the swaps to be carried out in a “dignified and private” manner.
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said postponing the release exposes “the entire agreement to grave danger”.
He called on the truce mediators, “especially the Americans”, to pressure Israel “to implement the agreement as it is and immediately release our prisoners”.
Both sides have accused each other of violations during the ceasefire but it has so far held.
SLAIN MOTHER ‘NOT KILLED BY EXPLOSION
Israel’s top forensics chief says slain Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas was not killed by an explosion, as Hamas has claimed.
Dr Chen Kugel, director of the Abu Kabir National Institute of Forensic Medicine, backed Israeli officials’ assertions that Mr Bibas, 32, and her two sons, nine-month-old Kfir and four-year-old Ariel, were not killed by an Israeli air strike in November 2023.
“Our examination found no injuries consistent with a bombing,” Dr Kugel told reporters.
“We were met with depths of evil and malice that could not be conceived.
While Dr Kugel did not say how Ms Bibas died, Israeli officials have claimed she was “brutally” murdered alongside her young children in November 2023.
The first transfer of dead hostages under the truce earlier this week sparked anger in Israel when the remains of Ms Bibas were not initially returned, promoting Hamas to admit a possible “mix-up of bodies” and finally hand over hers.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk condemned the “parading of bodies” during a ceremony in which coffins, with pictures of the dead attached, were displayed on a slogan-bedecked stage.
KHAMENEI VOWS ‘RESISTANCE’ AT HEZBOLLAH FUNERAL
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed “resistance” against Israel as Tehran-backed Hezbollah held a funeral in Beirut for its leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli strike last year.
“The enemy should know that resistance against usurpation, oppression and arrogance is never-ending and will continue until the desired goal is achieved,” Khamenei said in a statement published on his official website.
Nasrallah was killed alongside Iranian Revolutionary Guards general Abbas Nilforoushan in an Israeli strike on south Beirut on September 27, during a war between Israel and Hezbollah that ended in a November ceasefire.
Tens of thousands of mourners gathered in the Lebanese capital for the funeral of the longtime Hezbollah chief and his heir apparent Hashem Safieddine, who was killed in a separate strike.
Khamenei praised Nasrallah as “a great mujahid (fighter) and prominent leader”, and Safieddine as “a close confidant and an inseparable part of the leadership”.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in Beirut for the funeral along with parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and deputy Revolutionary Guards commander Ali Fadavi, said the fight against “oppression and occupation” will continue.
FATHER OF HOSTAGE SLAMS ABUSE
The father of Hisham al-Sayed, a Bedouin Muslim returned to Israel in the most recent round of hostage releases after nearly a decade in Gaza captivity, urged “the Arab world” to speak out against abuses by Hamas.
Sayed, 37, who is schizophrenic according to his family, had entered the Gaza Strip in 2015 and was held hostage there since.
“At the start of his captivity, when there were four hostages in Gaza, I thought that Hamas members would keep him safe, because it was in their interest” to exchange him for Palestinians in Israeli jails, said the father, Shaaban al-Sayed.
“When we got Hisham back, we were relieved to see him walking on his legs,” the father said, “but as I held him in my arms, I realised I was hugging a body … not a human being.” “He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t have a voice. He can’t remember anything. It’s like he hadn’t been with other human beings” during his years in captivity, he said.
“This makes us angry,” added the father, calling to intensify efforts to free all remaining hostages in Gaza.
— with AFP
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