The statements from Hamas and Netanyahu came after Palestinian groups last week released videos showing two emaciated Israeli captives held in Gaza, where some 2 million Palestinians are struggling to survive the Israeli-induced starvation crisis.
Netanyahu said on Sunday he had spoken to Julian Larson, the head of the ICRC delegation to Israel, requesting the group’s “immediate involvement” in providing food and medical treatment to captives still held in Gaza.
In a post on X, Netanyahu wrote in Hebrew that he told Larson that Hamas was propagating a “lie of starvation” in the enclave, but the reality was that “systematic starvation is being carried out against our hostages”.
Later on Sunday, the spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, stated in a statement that Israeli captives held in Gaza “eat what our fighters and all our people eat”.
“They will not receive any special privilege amid the crime of starvation and siege,” the spokesman, known as Abu Obeida, noted.
But, he added, the group is “ready to act positively and respond to any request from the Red Cross to deliver food and medicine to enemy prisoners”.
In order for requests to aid captives to be accepted, “humanitarian corridors must be opened in a normal and permanent manner for the passage of food and medicine to all our people in all areas of the Gaza Strip”, Abu Obeida continued.
Israeli attacks “of all forms must cease during the receipt of packages for the prisoners”, he stressed.
The families of Israeli captives held in Gaza announced on Sunday that Netanyahu’s continued insistence that a “military resolution” was the only solution was “a direct danger to the lives of our sons, who live in the hell of tunnels and are threatened by starvation and immediate death”.
“For 22 months, the public has been sold the illusion that military pressure will bring back the hostages, and today, even before reaching a comprehensive draft agreement, it is said that an agreement is futile,” the families said in a statement.
There are about 50 captives still in Gaza. Fewer than half are believed to be still alive.
