Israel hostage crisis: Hamas seeks release of Palestinian prisoners, calls non-Israeli captives ‘guests’

A top Hamas leader said the group “has what it needs” to free all Palestinians in Israel’s jails, indicating the militant group may try to use the Israelis it kidnapped as bargaining chips to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners.

Soon after Hamas official Khaled Meshaal made the remarks Monday on the captives, who include Israelis and non-Israelis kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, the group’s armed wing separately said the non-Israelis were “guests” who would be released “when circumstances allow”.

Gunmen from Hamas took scores of hostages after rampaging through southern Israeli communities and military bases, killing over 1,300 people. Israel’s military says the group is holding 199 hostages in Gaza. Hamas says it has between 200 and 250.

Hamas, which like other factions has long called for the release of the roughly 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, “has what it needs to empty the prisons of all prisoners,” Meshaal, a former Hamas chief who now heads its diaspora office in Doha, told AlAraby TV.

Israel’s collective memory has been scarred by hostage-taking going back to the Munich 1972 Olympic Games when an attack by Palestinian militants resulted in the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes and their coaches.

In 1976, Israeli forces freed hostages held by Palestinian militants on a plane that had been diverted to Entebbe airport in Uganda.

More recently in 2004, Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah freed the Israeli businessman and former army colonel Elhanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers in a swap that saw almost 450 prisoners released by Israel.

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Two years later in 2006, the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit by Palestinian militants triggered five months of military operations in Gaza. He was released five years later in a controversial exchange for around 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners.

That kind of exchange – which at the time was criticised by some Israelis as too lopsided – looks an impossible bargain with dozens of people being held now.

Israel, which has bombarded Gaza with strikes that have killed hundreds of Palestinians, has said it would act to free the hostages while eliminating Hamas.

Hamas has said it will execute hostages in response to Israeli strikes on civilians.

The captives are believed to include nationals of countries including Thailand and Germany. Other countries have reported their citizens as missing.

Israelis with dual nationality in countries including the United States are also believed to have been kidnapped.

The spokesman of Hamas’ armed wing, Abu Obeida, said in a video message that Hamas has “a group of detainees of different nationalities, these are our guests and we seek to protect them”.

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He added: “We will release detainees of different nationalities when circumstances on the ground allow”. He did not elaborate.

Another senior Hamas official, Moussa Abu Marzouk, said on Monday that “foreign prisoners cannot be released due to the continued Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip”.

Late on Monday, Hamas released a video showing a statement from one of the captives, a Franco-Israeli woman, who was seized in last week’s attack.

In the footage, the woman, whose injured arm is shown being treated by an unidentified medical worker, identifies herself as 21-year-old Mia Schem and asks to be returned to her family as quickly as possible.

A representative of the family, which was among a group of French families that appealed last week to President Emmanuel Macron to help free their missing relatives, confirmed her identity to Reuters.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said on Sunday during a visit to Israel that 19 French citizens are known to have been killed and 13 others are missing in the October 7 attack.

The Israeli military issued a statement, saying it was in constant touch with Schem’s family and condemning Hamas as a “murderous terrorist organisation”. It said it was using “all intelligence and operational measures” for the return of the captives.

“In the video, Hamas is trying to portray itself as a humane organisation, while it is a responsible for the murder and abduction of babies, women, children, and elderly,” it said.

Israel’s government has tapped Gal Hirsch, a former general embroiled in a corruption scandal, to coordinate the hostage crisis.

An FBI negotiator is also on site, with several US citizens among those Hamas is holding.

Additional reporting by Bloomberg and Agence France-Presse