The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas announced this Saturday the death of an Israeli hostage supposedly due to lack of food and medicine, and warned that other hostages are sick and require treatment. This is the hostage Yehiv Buchataf, 34 years old, reported Abu Obeida, spokesperson for the al Qasam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, on his Telegram channel.
“We had previously warned that the enemy’s prisoners suffer the same conditions that our people suffer, from hunger and deprivation, due to the lack of food and medicine,” said the spokesman. “The disease now threatens the lives of a number of them,” he added.
Abu Obeida’s announcement is accompanied by a propaganda video that shows a montage showing Buchataf’s face in a coffin.
“Although he survived the attacks of the occupation army, he did not escape the lack of food and medicine. Time is running out and his government lies,” is the message that appears written in the video, in Hebrew, Arabic and English.
Of the 253 kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 130 captives remain in the enclave, around thirty of them dead – more than 70 confirmed according to Hamas -, while there have been four other hostages for years, two of them dead.
Since the war began, Israel and Hamas only reached a one-week truce agreement in late November, which allowed the release of 105 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
In addition, four hostages were freed by Hamas in October, three rescued by the Army – two of them a few weeks ago in a successful operation in Rafah -, while the bodies of eleven hostages have been recovered, three of whom were killed by mistake. Israeli troops.
Some 600 relatives of 81 hostages still being held by Islamist militias inside the Gaza Strip signed a letter addressed to US President Jor Biden expressing their frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his management of the negotiations for his release.
Thousands of people took to the streets again this Saturday, in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Caesarea and other cities in Israel, to pressure the Israeli government to agree to a truce agreement and release of hostages and in some cases even to ask an electoral advance.
“The hostages cannot scream, they need us to be there for them and we will not stop until everyone is home,” announced the Forum of Families of Hostages and Missing Persons, which is leading the call.
“I appeal to the Prime Minister: you abandoned us on October 7 and continue to abandon us. Behavior that is unacceptable among Jews!”, cried the hostage freed in November, Adina Moshe, at the protest in Tel Aviv.
Delegations from Israel and Hamas are again in Doha to participate in indirect negotiations – mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US – on a new framework agreement that allows a truce of at least six weeks and the exchange of some 40 hostages for 400 Palestinian prisoners.
