Hamas issued a detailed statement overnight, Feb. 21-22, countering Israeli claims about the deaths of the Bibas family and putting the onus on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for their deaths and of all the other hostages who died in Gaza. Taher Al-Nono, media advisor to the Head of the Political Bureau of Hamas, said in the statement that Hamas’ original intention, after the Oct. 7, 2023 Al Aqsa Flood attack into Israel, was to return all of the hostages without conditions in the early days of the conflict, but Israel rejected the offer. At the time of the November 2023 truce, Hamas offered to return the remains of the Bibas family, who had been killed shortly before, “but the blame for the delay—and who now cries over this event—is on the occupation. It was the ‘israeli’ army that bombed the residential area where this family lived. Tens of thousands of Palestinian children have been killed, and their remains have become intermingled,” the statement says. “The one bearing responsibility for these massacres is the one who committed them (that is, Netanyahu—ed.). The occupation destroyed all our hospital capacities; it even demolished the equipment used to lift rubble and recover bodies. This may in the future affect the possibility of a third phase of the agreement.”
“We clearly state that we demand the machines and equipment necessary to extract the bodies of the Palestinian martyrs as well as those of the hostages who were killed,” the statement adds. “We also require the equipment needed for DNA testing to identify the bodies—equipment whose testing capabilities were destroyed by the occupation.”
As for the ceasefire agreement, itself, “We have completed our negotiation preparations for the second phase, and we hold the American administration—which confirmed that the phases are interconnected and that a second phase exists—along with the mediators, responsible for ensuring this matter and obliging the occupation to implement the agreement without delay,” the statement said.
