By Mohammed Majed
GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - The Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, said Sunday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen to maintain troops in the Philadelphi Corridor between Egypt and the Gaza Strip rather than getting back Israeli hostages alive.
This was mentioned in a video message addressed to the families of the Israeli hostages held in the Palestinian enclave.
It came hours after the Israeli army said it had recovered the bodies of six hostages from the southern Gaza Strip.
On Sunday evening, hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested, demanding a hostage swap deal with Palestinian factions amid ongoing protests and announcements of a general strike on Monday involving labor unions.
In the video, the brigades addressed the Israeli army: "What kind of heroism is this? And you are retrieving them as corpses after deliberately killing them."
“Indeed, they were alive and were supposed to be released in the first phase of the deal,” the message continued.
Addressing the families of the hostages, Al-Qassam said: “Netanyahu chose the Philadelphi Corridor over the liberation of your captives."
The video included images of Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip as well as photos of the six captives announced by the army to have been found in Gaza, followed by the message: "They have become part of the history."
The video also included a note: "Netanyahu is creating more Ron Arads."
Since 1986, Ron Arad, an Israeli Air Force weapon systems officer, has been missing, and Israeli media reports suggest that the Lebanese Amal movement captured him and handed him over to Lebanon’s Hezbollah group during the years of conflict with Israel in southern Lebanon from 1985-2000.
However, in 2006, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah denied knowledge of Arad's fate and said in a televised interview that he believed he was "dead and lost."
Israel’s Haaretz daily, citing an Israeli source, said three of the six hostages were supposed to be released in the first stage of a prisoner swap deal currently being negotiated.
"They appeared in the lists given over at the beginning of July. It was possible to bring them back alive," the source said.
Hamas said the six hostages were killed in ongoing Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.
Israel estimates that more than 100 hostages continue to be held by Hamas in Gaza, some of whom are believed to have been already killed.
On Thursday, the Israeli Security Cabinet approved the army’s continued presence in the Philadelphi Corridor as part of any proposed hostage exchange and cease-fire agreement.
With this decision, the Cabinet officially adopted Netanyahu’s position regarding the corridor.
For months, the US, Qatar and Egypt have been trying to reach an agreement between Israel and Hamas to ensure a prisoner exchange and a cease-fire and allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. But mediation efforts have been stalled due to Netanyahu’s refusal to meet Hamas’s demands to stop the war.
Israel’s ongoing offensive on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 40,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured over 94,100 others, according to local health authorities.
An ongoing blockade of the enclave has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine, leaving much of the region in ruins.
Israel faces accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which has ordered a halt to military operations in the southern city of Rafah, where over one million Palestinians had sought refuge before the area was invaded on May 6.
*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala