Israel slams Hamas ‘manipulation’ after it says it will free 1 living, 4 slain hostages

Hamas announced on Friday it had agreed to release hostage soldier Edan Alexander — a dual US-Israeli citizen –and the bodies of four other slain captives who are dual US nationals. In response, the Prime Minister’s Office blasted the terror group for rejecting a wider proposal by US special envoy Steve Witkoff that it said Israel had accepted, and accused Hamas of engaging in psychological warfare.

The Witkoff outline, which Israel says was proposed by the US envoy, would reportedly see 10 living hostages released immediately, a ceasefire through the end of Passover, and the release of all the other hostages if an agreement is reached on ending the war.

“While Israel has accepted the Witkoff proposal,” the Prime Minister’s Office said, “Hamas remains firm in its refusal and has not budged one millimeter.”

The PMO accused Hamas of engaging in “manipulation and psychological warfare.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will convene top aides and senior ministers on Saturday night to hear a briefing from Israel’s negotiators, his office said, and to decide on the next steps.

According to the PMO, negotiators who have spent the past week in Doha conducting mediated talks with Hamas were to be brought home later Friday.

Alexander is a soldier who was stationed near the Gaza Strip on the morning of October 7, 2023, when he was taken captive by Hamas-led terrorists during their brutal onslaught in southern Israel.

He was born in Tel Aviv, grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey, and joined Golani as a lone soldier after graduating from high school in 2022. He is believed to be the only living hostage with American citizenship still held in Gaza.

Related: ‘A bigger fight than anything imagined’: Edan Alexander’s mom battles for hostage son

A gaunt-looking Alexander appeared in a Hamas propaganda video released in November, in which he called on the Israeli government to bring him home.

In the second half of the video, Alexander speaks in English and calls on the incoming Trump administration to work for his release.

In its official statement, Hamas did not provide the names of the four slain dual US nationals or when they would be released. According to Israeli authorities, Hamas is holding the bodies of dual US citizens Judith Weinstein and her husband Gadi Haggai, Omer Neutra, and Itay Chen.

The terror group said it “affirms its complete readiness to initiate negotiations and reach a comprehensive agreement on the issues of the second phase while calling for the occupation (Israel) to fully implement its obligations.”

The Hamas move appeared aimed at driving a wedge between Israel and the US.

The Hamas statement indicated that the terror group had accepted an ostensible proposal that was discussed during direct talks with US hostage envoy Adam Boehler, held in recent weeks.

Those talks infuriated Jerusalem, which wasn’t fully kept in the loop, didn’t like that Boehler was discussing Israeli concessions without its knowledge, and feared it would lead Washington to abandon the remaining Israeli hostages after such a deal was reached.

But Boehler’s remit is specifically to try and free American hostages worldwide and his effort was approved by US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff when the main track of negotiations was stuck due to Israel’s refusal to begin substantive negotiations on the current deal’s second phase. That phase provides for the release of what are believed to be the final 24 living hostages, the freeing of large numbers of Palestinian terrorists and detainees, a full IDF withdrawal from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire. The deal, which went into effect on January 19, required that those talks begin on the 16th day.

There had not appeared to have been a breakthrough in Boehler’s direct talks — which broke off after Israel learned about them and leaked their existence to the media, according to two US officials — and talks had returned to their original channel led by Witkoff with mediating from Qatar and Egypt in Doha. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday described Boehler’s direct contacts with Hamas as a “one-off situation” that had not borne fruit.

Hamas’s decision to suddenly agree to release Alexander and the four slain dual US-Israeli hostages pointed to an attempt to divide the US and Israel by daring Jerusalem to deny an opportunity to free Americans.

Channel 12 noted Friday afternoon that Israel took a decision in principle at the start of the war not to favor hostages with dual nationalities over those without in its negotiations for the release of captives.

Families urge ministers not to waste time

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum slammed the PMO statement, stating that the issue of the hostages was more urgent and could not wait until after Shabbat for Netanyahu to meet ministers. Netanyahu had reportedly initially scheduled a security consultation for Friday afternoon, before his office announced that ministers would meet after Shabbat.

“Twenty-four hours in captivity is 24 hours in hell, torture and abuse, those are 24 hours of danger of death and disappearance,” the statement said, citing the principle of Pikuah Nefesh in Jewish law, which allows the laws of the sabbath to be broken to save lives.

In an earlier statement, the forum said it welcomed any opportunity to bring hostages home. Addressing Netanyahu, it said it was “deeply horrified” by the chance that hostages may remain in captivity for another extended period and urged him to end the war in exchange for a deal to release them all.

“If the Hamas announcement is true and gets underway, the return of those hostages should be the opening to an agreement that will bring everyone back in immediately in a single stage,” the forum said.

“Otherwise, it is selectivity that separates Zionism from its values and continues the abandonment of October 7 on the basis of a foreign passport. If Israel insists on stopping in the middle [of the deal] and leaves its citizens behind — the entire Jewish people will know that they must issue their child a foreign passport, or they will be abandoned,” it said.

During ongoing ceasefire talks in Doha this week, Witkoff reportedly proposed to extend the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip by several weeks in exchange for Hamas releasing five living and 10 dead hostages.

His proposal would reportedly maintain the current ceasefire until the end of both Ramadan and Passover, in exchange for the release of additional hostages, according to an Axios report on Thursday. At the same time, Israel would also be required to resume the flow of humanitarian aid into the war-torn Palestinian enclave.

Hebrew media outlets reported later Thursday that the US proposal would see the ceasefire extended for a further 42-50 days.

Israel gave “a positive response” to Witkoff’s latest proposal, the Axios report said, while Qatar and Egypt were still awaiting Hamas’s response after delivering the details of the outline to the terror group on Wednesday night.

According to a Channel 12 report on Friday, Israel has demanded that eight living hostages be freed. Hamas, for its part, reportedly demanded that the US guarantee that there will be discussions on phase two of the current deal.

Hamas has so far released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives, in exchange for some 2,000 Palestinian terrorists and detainees, during a ceasefire that began on January 19. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.

Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 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 body of another soldier killed in 2014, Lt. Hadar Goldin, is still being held by Hamas and is counted among the 59 hostages.