With the US and Israel accusing Hamas
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...of not wanting a truce deal and talking about pursuing "alternative options" to bring home the 50 hostages still held in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
, Hamas has taken steps to fend off possible military operations aimed at rescuing the remaining hostages, the London-based Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat reported on Saturday.
Hamas sources on the ground in Gaza told the Saudi outlet that the terror organization was taking additional precautionary measures to undermine potential efforts by Israeli special forces or others to rescue the hostages.
For example, Hamas has reinstated a policy to kill hostages if captors believe that Israeli forces are approaching. The policy had been canceled since the most recent ceasefire came into effect in March, the sources said.
The sources said Hamas was confident that such operations, if attempted, would not succeed.
Eight hostages have been rescued alive from captivity by troops. The bodies of 49 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.
The rest of the nearly 200 hostages set free were released as part of the ceasefire deals.
Hamas officials expressed surprise on Saturday at US President Donald Trump
...His ancestors didn't own any slaves...
’s accusation that it "didn’t really want" to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
Trump made the allegation on Friday, a day after Israeli and American teams left indirect negotiations with Hamas in Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
that had lasted nearly three weeks.
"Trump’s remarks are particularly surprising, especially as they come at a time when progress had been made on some of the negotiation files," Hamas’s Taher al-Nunu told AFP. "So far, we have not been informed of any issues regarding the files under discussion in the indirect ceasefire negotiations," he added.
Nunu, who is close to Hamas’s most senior political officials, said he was "surprised" that Israel and the US had left the talks.
Announcing the recall of US mediators on Thursday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff accused Hamas of not "acting in good faith."
"We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza," Witkoff said.
Both Hamas officials called on the US to be more even-handed in its role as mediator in the quest for a ceasefire after more than 21 months of fighting. "We call for an end to the US bias in favor of Netanyahu, who is obstructing any agreement," Nunu said.
While Washington and Jerusalem fumed at Hamas over the response it submitted Thursday to the latest proposal for a 60-day Gaza truce and hostage release deal, Egypt and Qatar took a more nuanced approach. They indicated that the Hamas response indeed contained too many requests for changes to the proposal, but maintained that the gaps were bridgeable, an Arab diplomat and a source involved in the mediation effort told The Times of Israel on Friday.
Trump painted a far more bleak outlook and appeared to indicate that the US may not be able to secure the return of the remaining 50 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to still be alive.
"I said this was going to happen," Trump told news hounds, claiming to have predicted the current impasse.
"We got a lot of hostages out. But when you get down to the last 10 or 20, I don’t think Hamas is going to make a deal because that means they have no protection. And basically that’s what happened," he said.
"I think what’s going to happen is they’re going to be hunted down," Trump continued. "It [has] gotten to a point where [Israel is] going to have to finish the job."
Israel is "going to have to fight, and going to have to clean it up. You’re gonna have to get rid of [Hamas]," he said, acknowledging that the situation is "sort of disappointing."