Israeli prisoner of war in Gaza attempts suicide as Netanyahu kills ceasefire talks — again
The Israeli refusal to agree to a ceasefire deal is taking a toll on Hamas's prisoners in Gaza.
The Israeli dilly dallying on the ceasefire negotiations is taking a toll on their prisoners of war held by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. One of the Israeli captives attempted to kill himself, Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), revealed on Thursday.
Abu Hamza, the spokesperson of Al-Quds Brigades, in a series of updates said that the psychological condition of one of the captives deteriorated after Netanyahu’s unceasing shenanigans led to the failure of the latest round of ceasefire negotiations. Timely medical intervention saved the Israeli’s life. “Three days ago, one of our medical teams dealt with a suicide attempt by a prisoner held by one of the security groups in Al-Quds Brigades,” Abu Hamza wrote on his official Telegram channel. “The medical team succeeded in saving the prisoner’s life after he tried to commit suicide due to his psychological condition after the Netanyahu government set new conditions that led to the failure and delay of the negotiations for his release.”
Abu Hamza added that the Israeli was on the list of the prisoners due to be released in the first phase of the deal. “The Zionist prisoner who tried to commit suicide was scheduled to be released as part of a batch of prisoners who met the conditions and criteria of the first phase of the exchange deal with the enemy,” he added. “As a result of this incident, Al-Quds Brigades made a decision to tighten the security and safety measures for the prisoners.”
Abu Hamza didn’t reveal the identity of the Israeli in question.
The Netanyahu regime has consistently foiled any attempts to reach a prisoner exchange deal. Every time the negotiations have moved toward a possible breakthrough, the Israeli negotiators have thrown a spanner in the works, scuttling the whole thing down. Back in May 2024 Hamas agreed to a deal that the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken fraudulently described as “extraordinarily, extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel.” Despite the Palestinians accepting the “extraordinarily, extraordinarily generous” deal, the Israelis shred the agreement and proceeded to launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza.
They subsequently killed the chief Palestinian negotiator Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in late July for his unceasing efforts to get a deal done. Once Yahya Sinwar took charge of Hamas after Haniyeh’s assassination, the Palestinian resistance insisted on sticking to the July 2 ceasefire proposal, which was based on commitments made by Joe Biden and a United Nations Security Council resolution. However, the Israelis backtracked again without any consequence. Subsequent ceasefire negotiations have similarly been sabotaged with the Netanyahu regime inserting unfeasible last minute demands to kill any possibility of a deal.
Such treacherous moves have only served to make the life of the Israeli prisoners in Gaza miserable. The Palestinian resistance has regularly released videos of the captives appealing to the Israeli leadership to agree to a deal, and urging their compatriots in the genocidal colony to take to the streets and agitate against their government for their release.
Hamas has also repeatedly stressed that the genocidal siege on Gaza also impacts the condition of the Israeli captives due to the limited resources to go around. Matan Zangauker, an Israeli prisoner in Gaza, featured in the last video of a captive released by Al-Qassam Brigades — the armed wing of Hamas. In the video released on December 7, Zangauker reveals the tough conditions the captives endure, “The lack of hygiene products affects us badly. We have skin diseases and dandruff. And we don’t have soap.” This complaint about a lack of resources has been a consistent theme in such videos.
Notably, the prisoners were taken very good care of even while the Israeli genocide was in full swing. Back in June, when the Zionists in conjunction with the United States conducted a campaign to retrieve some captives, it resulted in the barbaric massacre of nearly 300 Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp. The mission retrieved four captives. Those rescued were kept in civilian homes — not tunnels — and acknowledged receiving good treatment during their captivity. One prisoner revealed that Hamas fighters even presented him with a cake on his birthday.
However, the barbaric campaign that accompanied the massacre-cum-rescue operation hardened the resistance’s stance and they threatened harsher measures against the captives if a similar move was attempted again. No Israeli has been retrieved alive since the Nuseirat bloodbath.
Worse, the indiscriminate Zionist bombardments in Gaza have also been killing the captive Israelis. On May 13, Al-Qassam spokesman Abu Obeida gave a glimpse of the impact of the relentless Israeli bombings, “As a result of the barbaric Zionist bombing over the past ten days, we have lost contact with a group of our fighters who were guarding four Zionist prisoners, including the prisoner Hersh Goldberg-Polin.” Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American, survived that assault but was killed in August. The Israelis have acknowledged killing six captives in August.
In the December 7 video, Zangauker says rather ominously, “We want to return before we go crazy. Isolation is killing us, and the darkness here is frightening.”
The Israeli prisoners certainly don’t seem to like the conditions their country has subjected the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to for over 18 years since the start of the blockade in 2007.
The Israeli terrorists who aren’t in Palestinian captivity don’t seem to be faring any better either. According to the latest figures released by the Israeli occupation forces, 28 soldiers have killed themselves since October 7, 2023. Back in June, I reported on one such case of an Israeli killing himself after a tour of genocide during which he gleefully filmed himself carrying out numerous war crimes. According to Israeli military figures, thousands of reservist soldiers have stopped serving in combat roles due to “mental stress.”
Despite a recruitment crisis, low troop morale, and complete failure to halt the Palestinian resistance after 15 months of unrestrained genocide, the Israelis are still showing no sign of reaching a ceasefire deal.
The recent round of negotiations appeared to be heading in the right direction and Palestinian officials expressed hope for an impending deal, but this round of talks also went the way of the previous ones. “Cease-fire talks between Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Israeli government have hit an impasse in recent days, Arab mediators said, making any deal unlikely before the end of the Biden administration,” The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The WSJ report further adds that “the talks stalled as they got deeper into the specifics.” The article goes on to reveal that one of the key sticking points in the latest talks is Hamas’s insistence on ending the genocidal war: “Mediators said Israel insisted that it receive only living hostages in any exchange and refused to approve the release of some of the Palestinian detainees sought by Hamas, while the militant group revived its demand for a path to an end to the war.”
The Israelis want a similar sham of a deal they made with the Lebanese negotiators, where the opposition ceases fire but the Zionists do as they please. The Palestinians are having none of it. They insist upon an end to the genocidal war and full withdrawal of the Israeli troops from Gaza. These are two of the most important demands that the Palestinians have stuck to since the beginning of the negotiations.
Hamas has shown remarkable flexibility from its early demands when it proposed an all for all prisoner exchange deal, swapping the 250-odd Israelis in Gaza for the nearly 10,000 Palestinians — most of whom were under “administrative detention” and never charged for any crime — languishing in Israeli dungeons. Such a deal could have been reached on October 8, 2023. But the Zionists chose genocide. And they have continued to choose genocide whenever a potential deal has neared completion.
Trump has threatened that “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East” if the Israeli prisoners aren’t released before his January 20 inauguration. It is entirely likely that the hell that the American-funded and supported Zionist terrorism has wrought in Gaza might just consume all the Israeli prisoners before any agreement is reached. The Israelis in Gaza are already caving in.
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Netanyahu's repeatedly shown he is more concerned with continuing genocide than even saving Israeli lives. People denouncing Hamas as terrorists while excusing the actions of the IDF have no bounds to their hypocrisy.
Readers of Palestine Will Be Free are well aware of the steps necessary for the US to bring an end to the conflict in the region, so there is no need to reiterate these points. It is evident to many, including those who follow this insightful Substack column, that while Trump may be known for his brash rhetoric, he also possesses the ability to follow through on his promises, which makes him a formidable and potentially dangerous figure. This poses a significant threat to both sides of the conflict if he chooses to act on his words.