Hamas frees three Gaza Geiseln as an armistice brand with the ceasefire

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Hamas published three other Israeli men from Gaza on Saturday, after the increasingly fragile four -week ceasefire had almost collapsed in a week of Brinkmanship.

The Israelis were handed over to the international committee of the Red Cross in an artistically staged ceremony in Khan Younis, a largest destroyed city – and the Hamas stronghold – in the southern Gaza Strip.

During the attack of the Palestinian militant group on October 7, 2023, in which, according to Israeli officials, around 1,200 people were killed, they were hosted by the hosts from their houses in Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Sagui Dekel-Schen, a 36-year-old American Israeli, Russian-Israeli Sasha Troubanov (29) and Argentinian Israeli-Isiir-Horn, 46, seemed to be at least physically better released last weekend.

During the ceremony, the Hamas fighters showed weapons and uniforms that they captured by Israeli military bases during the cross-border robbery in 2023.

Israel began to publish more than 350 Palestinian prisoners on Saturday under the conditions of the ceasefire, of which 36 lifelong prison terms were served due to violence against Israelis.

The vast majority of others had been held in Israeli prisons without legal proceedings after being arrested in Gaza during the 15 months of the war. According to the local officials, more than 48,000 people have been killed in besieged stripes since the beginning of the war.

The agreement almost collapsed at the beginning of this week after Hamas claimed that Israel had violated the ceasefire by blocking the entry into the Gaza of heavy machines to remove rubble and mobile homes to accommodate hundreds of thousands of repressed Palestinian civilians.

Hamas threatened to delay the release of the hostages if Israel did not make it easier to enter the equipment in accordance with the ceasefire contract. In the following days, Arab media sent pictures of some heavy machines that occur through Egypt, and Hamas agreed to continue the staggered publications of hostages on Friday.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed on Saturday that he forced the Hamas to reset the troops near the border between Gaza Strip in South Israel and restart the war if the release did not take place as planned.

“This week, Hamas tried again to violate the agreement and create a wrong crisis,” he said in a statement.

After the publications, US President Donald Trump seemed to resign from his threat in early this week “Hell” would “break out” If Hamas did not publish the hostages on Saturday at 12 noon.

Instead, he wrote about the social truth that he would leave it to Israel to take measures.

“Israel now has to decide what you will do about the 12:00 p.m., which is imposed today when all hostages are published. The United States will support the decision they make! “He wrote.

The three -stage ceasefire is located in a transition period between the first and second phases, in which negotiations to end the war.

In the first six-week time, which at the beginning of March, the Hamas ended in publishing 33 Israeli hostages, including all children, women and men over 50.

24 people released it on Saturday – 19 Israelis and five Thai agricultural workers who were also taken hostage on October 7. Many of the remaining 73 hostages are considered dead. Of the remaining 14, only six hostages covered in this first phase are alive.

The group originally took around 250 people hosted on October 7, 2023. During a short ceasefire in November 2023, around 120 was published in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas will only start releasing the male soldiers they have captured and passed over the corpses of the dead hostages when negotiations manage to convert the temporary ceasefire into a permanent armistice. This would permanently withdraw its armed forces from Gaza.

These talks should start last week, but Israel does not yet have to send high -ranking teams to Qatar or Egypt, who convey the agreement next to the United States.

The framework of the ceasefire is increasingly under stress due to operational wrenches and Trump’s repeated claims that it intends to take over the United States.

Trump’s proposal, which could lead to a mass assignment of around 2.3 million Palestinian civilians, encouraged Netanyahu, who is increasingly not ready to end the war with Hamas.

Trump organized Jordan’s King Abdullah in the White House this week and repeated his claim that Jordan and Egypt would accept the refugees despite the widespread conviction of the plan in the Arab world.

“We say to the world that there is no migration except in Jerusalem,” said Hamas in a statement after the publication of Saturday. “This is our answer to Trump’s demands for displacement and liquidation.”

Additional reporting from Steff Chávez in Washington