AhlulBayt News Agency: Senior Hamas member Ezzat Al-Rashq has said that the ongoing Israeli-imposed starvation campaign in Gaza is affecting Israeli prisoners held in the Palestinian territory.
In comments carried by Palestine Al-Aqsa TV early on Monday, the Hamas official held Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet responsible for the hunger faced by Israeli prisoners.
Palestinian fighters treat Israeli prisoners based on religious teachings and humanitarian values, he said, adding that the fighters share the same food and water they eat and drink with the prisoners.
The prisoners’ condition is the same as what Palestinians are experiencing in Gaza, he further said.
During the several rounds of prisoner exchanges that took place in the past months, the world witnessed that Israeli prisoners were released in complete physical and mental health, Al-Rashq said.
But today, he added, the prisoners, like Palestinian fighters and the people of Gaza, are suffering from severe hunger and weight loss.
Israel has imposed a crippling siege on Gaza since early March, restricting the entry of food, water, and other basic supplies into the territory. The regime has also set up its own aid distribution centers to replace UN-run zones. The centers however have caused growing global outcry as more than one thousand aid seekers have been shot dead by Israeli forces, while waiting to get food.
Netanyahu on Sunday demanded the International Committee of the Red Cross immediately involve in providing food and medical treatment to prisoners still held in Gaza.
Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing, expressed readiness to respond positively to any Red Cross request to deliver medicine and food to the prisoners but under certain conditions.
Al-Qassam Brigades does not intend to starve the prisoners, he said, adding that they “eat what our fighters and all our people eat,” according to Al Jazeera.
In order for requests to aid the prisoners to be accepted, “humanitarian corridors must be opened in a normal and permanent manner for the passage of food and medicine to all our people in all areas of the Gaza Strip”, Abu Obeida emphasized in his statement, which was carried by the Qatar-based news network.
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