‘Prisoner swap or hostages doomed’, Hamas tells Israel

Hamas has warned that no hostages will leave Gaza alive unless its demands for prisoner releases are met.

The makeshift tent camps housing Palestinians displaced by intense Israeli bombardment on the Gaza Strip seeking refuge in open areas around the Raed al-Attar Mosque in Rafah, near the Egyptian border. Picture: AFP

Hamas has warned that no hostages will leave Gaza alive unless its demands for prisoner releases are met, while the World Health ­Organisation said the territory’s health system was collapsing after more than two months of war.

“Neither the fascist enemy and its arrogant leadership ... nor its supporters ... can take their prisoners alive without an exchange and negotiation and meeting the ­demands of the resistance,” a Hamas spokesman said in a televised broadcast.

But a defiant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Hamas to give up.

“It is the beginning of the end of Hamas. I say to the Hamas terrorists: It’s over. Don’t die for (Yahya) Sinwar. Surrender now,” he said, referring to the Hamas chief in Gaza.

Senior Hamas official Bassem Neim said in late November that the terrorist group was “ready to release all soldiers in ­exchange for all our prisoners”.

Israel says there are still 137 hostages in Gaza, while activists say about 7000 Palestinians are in Israeli jails.

Palestinians flee Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip further south toward Rafah, Picture: AFP

A source close to Hamas and ­Islamic Jihad said on Sunday that both groups were engaged in “fierce clashes” with Israeli forces near the southern city of Khan Younis, where heavy strikes were reported, as well as in Jabalia and Gaza City in the north.

The Israeli army said it had struck more than 250 targets in 24 hours up to Sunday night, including “a Hamas military communications site”, “underground tunnel shafts” in southern Gaza, and a Hamas military command centre in Gaza City.

It says 98 soldiers have died and about 600 wounded in the Gaza campaign. About 7000 “terrorists” have been killed, according to ­National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi.

“Hamas should not exist, ­because they are not human ­beings, after what I saw they did,” Menahem, a 22-year-old soldier wounded in the October 7 massacre, said during a military-organised media tour that did not allow him to give his surname.

Hamas triggered the conflict with the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7 in which it killed 1200 people, according to ­Israeli figures, and dragged about 240 hostages back to Gaza.

Israel has responded with a ­relentless military offensive that has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed at least 17,997 people, mostly women and children, ­according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

As aid groups warn the territory is on the brink of being overwhelmed by disease and starvation, the head of the UN ­decried a divided and “paralysed” Security Council for failing to agree on a ceasefire at the weekend.

“Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing,” said World Health Organisation chief Tedros Ghebreyesus, with only 14 of 36 hospitals functioning.

WHO’s executive board overnight on Sunday adopted a resolution calling for immediate, unimpeded aid deliveries.

The UN estimates 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced – roughly half of them children – many forced south and running out of safe ­places to go.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said the Security Council’s “authority and credibility were severely undermined”, after the US blocked a ceasefire resolution on Friday.

“I can promise, I will not give up,” Mr Guterres said in Qatar, where Hamas’s top leadership is based.

Qatar said it was still working on a new truce like the week-long ceasefire it helped mediate last month in which 80 Israeli hostages were exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners and humanitarian aid.

Smoke rises above the northern part of Gaza Strip amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. Picture: AFP

But Israel’s relentless bombardment was “narrowing the window” for success, said Qatari Prime Minister Sheik Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday again rejected a ceasefire. “With Hamas still alive, still intact and … with the stated intent of repeating October 7 again and again and again, that would simply perpetuate the problem,” he told ABC News.

But Mr Blinken also told CNN that Israeli forces should ensure “military operations are designed around civilian protection”.

In Rafah in southern Gaza, one displaced woman said she had been stuck there for 18 days despite having an Egyptian passport.

“Whenever I want to go somewhere, we hear bombing and shelling and feel scared and go back,” Noura al-Sayed Hassan said.

“I’ve been searching for bread for my daughter for over a week now.”

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees voiced alarm over what he feared would be a mass expulsion of Palestinians into Egypt. In an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, Philippe Lazzarini said “the developments we are witnessing point to attempts to move Palestinians into Egypt”.

An Israeli spokesman responded: “There is not, never was, and never will be an Israeli plan to move the residents of Gaza to Egypt.”

Fears of regional escalation continue with frequent cross-border exchanges between Israel and Lebanese militants, and attacks by pro-Iran groups against US and ­allied forces in Iraq and Syria.

France said on Sunday that one of its frigates in the Red Sea had shot down two drones launched from Yemen.

AFP