News / Palestine

Israeli captives’ families scold extremist minister Smotrich for opposing Gaza deal

Monday, 13 January 2025 5:38 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 13 January 2025 5:38 PM ]

The photo, taken on January 11, 2025, shows Ilana Gritzewsky, one of 105 Israeli captives released during a one-week truce in November 2023. (Photo by AFP)

The families of Israeli captives held in the Gaza Strip since last October have expressed anger at Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's opposition to ending the war and bringing their relatives back.

Smotrich, a notorious Zionist hardliner, is opposed to the peace deal currently being negotiated in Qatar's capital, Doha, to stop the genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza and release the Israeli captives.

Angry family members of some of the captives, many carrying photographs of their relatives, harangued Smotrich on Monday.

Squeezed into a committee room in the Knesset, the families -- some furious, some crying, and others pleading -- told Smotrich in an emotionally charged encounter that lasted for more than an hour to stop opposing a peace deal with the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement.

They rebuked Smotrich, saying he had abandoned the Israeli captives held by Palestinian resistance groups.

Hamas approves list of 34 Israeli captives to release amid Doha talks

A senior Hamas official has said that the Palestinian resistance group is ready to release 34 captives in the "first phase" of a potential ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal.

One family member, Ofir Angrest, whose brother Matan was taken captive during Operation Al-Aqsa Storm on Oct. 7, 2023, told Smotrich that the time had come to make a deal for the return of the captives.

A key obstacle to the peace deal between representatives from the Tel Aviv regime and Hamas -- which has been brokered by mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States -- has been vocal opposition by Israeli hardliners led by Smotrich, who continuously refuse to agree to a lasting ceasefire with Hamas.

Smotrich, who is the leader of one of the extremist parties forming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition ruling the Tel Aviv regime, has been among the loudest opponents of the peace deal, which he has described as a “surrender” to Hamas.

Till now, Netanyahu has rejected a series of ceasefire proposals set before him, including one laid by the Biden administration in May.

Hamas seeks formation of 'national consensus government' in Gaza: Hamdan

Osama Hamdan, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon and a member of the group’s politburo, says the resistance group seeks the formation of a national consensus government in Gaza.

However, mounting public and diplomatic pressure on the Tel Aviv regime to reach a deal for securing the release of captives has also increased.

Palestinian resistance groups, for their part, have been showing readiness to make a deal to end the Israeli aggression in Gaza.

At least 46,600 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed since the Israeli regime unleashed the war on the Gaza Strip in early October 2023.

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