Sinwar still supervising Gaza war; Israel deliberately delaying talks on captives: Hamas official
A senior Hamas official has dismissed claims that the ongoing genocidal Israeli war against the Gaza Strip has led to “isolation” of the resistance movement’s leader Yahya Sinwar.
“Talk that Sinwar is isolated in the tunnels is nothing but an allegation,” a senior official with the group told al-Araby al-Jadeed, the news outlet reported on Wednesday.
Sinwar “is carrying out his work as a leader of the movement in the field,” the official added.
The source said such misleading information had been provided “by [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his agencies to cover up his failure to achieve the goals [of the war].”
The Israeli regime launched the war in October, following al-Aqsa Storm, a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups against the occupied territories, during which hundreds were taken captive.
The war has so far claimed the lives of 34,183 Palestinians and wounded a total of 77,143 others.
Despite the unabated campaign of bloodletting, the regime has so far fallen short of realizing its "goals", namely defeating the resistance, releasing the captives, and causing forced displacement of the coastal sliver’s entire population to neighboring Egypt.
The Hamas official rejected Hebrew-language media reports that the Israeli war had resulted in the defeat of the resistance in the central and northern parts of Gaza.
“The occupation’s resumption of its military campaign in the north and center, after it had previously announced its annihilation of the resistance there, is due to its awareness of the incorrectness of what it previously claimed [about the resistance’s defeat in those areas],” the Hamas figure noted.
He, meanwhile, announced that the group was currently holding as many as 30 Israeli generals and officers, who were captured during the al-Aqsa storm operation.
“The captured officers are in highly secured places far from the hands of the occupation,” the official said.
The Israeli regime, the source said “is practicing a systematic process of misleading” the Israeli public about the captives and their situation “in order to evade the duty of liberating these prisoners.”
In November, Hamas released 105 of the captives in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners as part of a four-day truce deal.
The Hamas official said the only means of releasing the remaining captives was for the regime to engage in “serious negotiations followed by a full commitment to a ceasefire and [Gaza’s] reconstruction.”
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