No Ceasefire in Gaza Without the Release of the Hostages!

Hamas has rejected to date a compromise proposal linking the release of hostages from Gaza and Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails with a six-week ceasefire allowing the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in need throughout Gaza. Israel has accepted this proposal but will not give in to Hamas’s demand that all Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza while Hamas remains a security threat to Israel. But somehow, in the eyes of the so-called “international community,” it is Israel's fault that there is no ceasefire.

At the March 8^th press briefing at UN headquarters in New York, I asked the spokesperson for the Secretary General whether Secretary General Guterres would call out Hamas specifically for rejecting this latest ceasefire proposal. The spokesperson did not answer the question directly. “I will not be led into micromanaging negotiations that are going on with… as we've seen in the media, with Hamas and Egypt and Israel and others,” he said. “We're not at the table. So it's not for me to… or for the Secretary-General to get directly involved.”

Whether the UN is directly involved in the negotiations or not, the Secretary General should have an opinion regarding Hamas’s obstinate rejectionism that is impeding the achievement of the immediate humanitarian ceasefire that Secretary General Guterres has been urging.

I then took my inquiry one step further. I asked whether the Secretary General believes that his call for the unconditional release of all the hostages and for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire should be considered separately or linked together like the ceasefire proposal that Hamas has rejected. The spokesperson would not say if Secretary General Guterres would still press for an immediate ceasefire even without the release of any hostages. But a call for an immediate ceasefire, regardless of the hostages’ fate, would reward Hamas's abduction while giving them time to rebuild.

Virtually all the members of the UN Security Council supported a draft resolution submitted by Algeria last month that called for an immediate ceasefire without any conditions including the release of hostages held by the terrorists. The United States thankfully vetoed this entirely one-sided proposed resolution that once again was void of any language condemning Hamas’s terrorist attack.

Hamas, not Israel, is responsible for the devastation in Gaza. Hamas broke the ceasefire that had been in place until the terrorists invaded Israel, killed about 1200 people, abducted more than two hundred men, women, and children, and raped innocent women and girls on October 7^th .

It is Hamas, not Israel, who uses Palestinian women and children as human shields and has tried to prevent the evacuation of Palestinian civilians to safer areas.

It is Hamas, not Israel, who hoards food, fuel, and other necessities desperately needed by the Palestinian civilian population and hides weapons, command centers, and its fighters in tunnels located under civilian facilities such as hospitals.

It is Hamas, not Israel, who broke the last temporary cessation of fighting between Hamas and Israel. And it is Hamas, not Israel, who refuses to accept the current proposal for a longer ceasefire allowing vital humanitarian aid to safely reach the needy, unless all Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza at once and leave Hamas substantially intact.

Israel is fighting for its survival as a Jewish state against the genocidal Hamas terrorists who are funded, armed, and trained by their state sponsor, the Iranian regime. Until Hamas’s capability to inflict another October 7^th-style massacre is destroyed, there can be no viable two-state solution and no genuine peace and stability in the region.