President’s Hamas stand is right

Donald Trump’s warning that “all hell will break loose” if all the Israeli hostages are not released by noon local time on Saturday (9pm AEDT) provides the response that is needed to the Hamas terrorists’ latest despicable display of inhumane chicanery over the hostages’ fate. It will be regrettable if that means the end of the fragile ceasefire that has been in the balance since it was signed on January 19. But the Hamas thugs will have only themselves to blame if it does and Gaza’s desperate people are plunged again into another round of the horrifying violence of the past 16 months.

Hamas’s absurd attempt on Monday to blame violations by Israel of the ceasefire agreement for the terrorists’ decision to delay more scheduled hostage releases could not be further from reality. The terrorists must be left in no doubt about the consequences if they persist with their self-serving tactics. Mr Trump spoke for many on Monday when he referred to the horror he felt as he watched coverage of the release last Saturday of three shamefully emaciated hostages – Eli Sharabi, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami. The US President was not alone in concluding they looked like survivors of the Holocaust. “They were in (a) horrible condition,” he said. “They were emaciated. You know, at some point, we’re gonna lose our patience, I don’t know how long we can take it.”

Accounts of what the hostages suffered during their 441-day incarceration should not lessen global outrage. The three have told their families how they were chained and gagged, tortured regularly with a “white hot” object and hung by their feet during their captivity. The mother of Eliya Cohen, 27, who is still in captivity, has learned from returned hostages that her son has been chained in a tunnel for the entire period of his captivity, gets little food or daylight, and suffers from an untreated bullet wound sustained during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, slaughter of 1200 Jews. Yet some in our midst sympathise with Hamas.

The Saturday deadline Mr Trump has set for Hamas to release the hostages demands solid global support, including from allies such as Australia. After the grotesque October 7 massacre, it may be no surprise that the terrorists are behaving in such a barbaric way and seeking to delay the further release of hostages. News coverage since the ceasefire shows their claims that Israel is violating the ceasefire by delaying the return of displaced people to northern Gaza, targeting them with shelling and gunfire, and failing to allow the entry of humanitarian aid are demonstrably false.

Since the January 19 ceasefire agreement, 16 Israeli hostages and 566 Palestinians serving sentences in Israeli jails have been freed. A total of 33 hostages and 1900 Palestinians are slated for release by the end of the first phase of the ceasefire, 42 days after the agreement was concluded. At least eight hostages are believed to be dead.

It will be heartbreaking for families of hostages whose return is awaited, and for Israel, if Hamas continues to halt further releases. Mr Trump is right to leave the terrorists in no doubt about the dire consequences that await them if they do. Giving in to the terrorists’ outrageous new blackmail would be unconscionable.

Critical negotiations over stage two of the ceasefire deal are at risk because of Hamas’s block on further releases. As Mr Trump says, a final decision on the future of the ceasefire if Hamas persists with its halt on releases rests with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israel Defence Forces has raised its alert levels and cancelled all leave in anticipation of a resumption of war. Such is the continuing horror faced by the hostages, their families and long-suffering Gazans because of Hamas’s unrelenting evil.