The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad issued a chilling threat to the remaining hostages in Gaza in a brazen warning to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid fears the fragile ceasefire between Hamas and Israel could break down.
‘The fate of the prisoners (hostages) held by the resistance is directly tied to Netanyahu’s actions, for better or worse,’ the Al-Quds Brigades said in a video statement posted on its Telegram channel.
It came after Netanyahu threatened to resume fighting in Gaza if Hamas fails to release Israeli captives held in the territory by Saturday.
A sixth hostage-prisoner exchange was scheduled for Saturday, but earlier this week Hamas had announced it was postponing the upcoming release, citing Israel’s failure to allow the entry of key humanitarian aid into Gaza.
‘We affirm our commitment to the terms of the agreement as long as the occupation commits to them,’ Hamas spokesperson Abu Obaida wrote, referring to Israel.
With the United States a key party in mediating the ceasefire, Donald Trump backed Israel and said ‘I would say let hell break out’ unless ‘all’ of the remaining 76 hostages are released by midday on Saturday.
Trump insisted he was speaking for himself in the escalatory comments late on Monday, adding that ‘Israel can override it’.
A diplomat familiar with the talks said that mediators were engaged with both Israel and Hamas to resolve the dispute and ensure the implementation of the long elusive agreement.
Tents sheltering displaced Palestinians are erected in the yards of destroyed schools and buildings in the north of Gaza City on February 11
Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants carry rifles on January 30, 2025
As a Hamas delegation attended talks in Cairo today, Israel was making preparations to resume the war in Gaza after giving the terror group an ultimatum.
A diplomat familiar with the talks told AFP: ‘Mediators are engaging with both Israel and Hamas to try to solve the current issues and ensure both parties of the conflict adhere to the ceasefire and hostage release agreement in place.’
A senior Hamas official told AFP its delegation ‘will discuss ways to end the current crisis and ensure the (Israeli) occupation’s commitment to implementing the agreement’.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the group demanded that Israel ‘adhere to the agreed humanitarian protocol’.
‘The Israeli occupation is evading the implementation of several provisions of the ceasefire agreement,’ Qassem said in a separate statement.
‘Our position is clear, and we will not accept the language of American and Israeli threats. Israel must commit to implementing the terms of the ceasefire agreement’ to secure the release of its hostages, Qassem said.
A Palestinian source familiar with the issue earlier told AFP that mediators Egypt and Qatar were ‘working intensively’ to resolve the crisis surround the ceasefire deal.
Israel and Hamas are in the midst of a six-week ceasefire during which Hamas is releasing dozens of the hostages captured in its October 7, 2023, attack in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
The two sides have so far carried out five successful swaps since the ceasefire went into effect last month, freeing 21 hostages and more than 730 prisoners.
However, the situation remains delicate with many detainees still to be released by both sides, and latter stages of the deal yet to be confirmed.
Benjamin Netanyahu (pictured) said Israel would resume ‘intense fighting’ in Gaza if Hamas did not return hostages by Saturday noon. Trump said that he believed Israel should ‘let hell break out’
Hamas fighters escort Israeli hostage Or Levy on a stage before handing him over to a Red Cross team in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, on February 8, 2025, as part of the fifth hostage-prisoner exchange of a fragile ceasefire
Hamas promised to release 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and an end to the hostilities.
It is currently unclear how many of the 76 hostages that remain in Hamas’ control are still alive.
Until now, the delicate ceasefire arrangement has held, though Israel insists it retains the right to go back into Gaza should the second phase of the agreement collapse.
Talks on the second phase, meant to see more hostages released and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, were due to start February 3.
But Israel and Hamas appear to have made little progress, even as Israeli forces withdrew Sunday from a Gaza corridor in the latest commitment to the truce.
With just days to go until the sixth exchange, the ceasefire is on course to break down unless both sides are able to come to some agreement.
Three hostages were set to be released on Saturday, but Hamas has claimed that Israel has not lived up to its side of the deal, citing recent Israeli shelling and gunfire in Gaza, as well as an insufficient flow of aid.
It added that it had announced the delay five days before the scheduled release to allow time for negotiations.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, however, said any delay in the release of hostages would represent a ‘complete violation’ of the ceasefire agreement, and warned that Israel’s military would assume its ‘highest level of readiness,’ the Washington Post reports.
Palestinian residents, shopping at the market, try to meet their basic needs among the collapsed buildings as they continue to live in Khan Yunis, Gaza, on February 12
Khan Yunis was heavily damaged by Israeli airstrikes before their withdrawal, on February 12
Donald Trump warned on Monday that while the decision ultimately rests on Israel’s shoulders, if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday noon ‘I would say cancel [the ceasefire]… all bets are off and let hell break out’.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed President Trump’s warnings yesterday, declaring that the ceasefire will end and the assault relaunched if the demand is not met.
He promised that Israel’s military would ‘return to intense fighting until Hamas is finally defeated’ and said that he has ordered the IDF to ‘amass forces inside – and surrounding – the Gaza Strip.’
‘This action is being carried out at this hour and will be completed very soon,’ he said yesterday.
Israel’s Southern Command units have been placed on high alert, with the Gaza Division and 162nd Division, which operate inside Gaza and around its perimeter, in a particularly heightened state of readiness.
A number of other units are also said to be on standby for potential deployment, with additional divisions preparing for possible operations in Gaza depending on how the situation unfolds, Israeli media reports.
The alert level is also reported to have been raised for the Israeli Air Force and its Intelligence Division.
The Israeli military has said the bolstering of troops has been ‘extensive’ and that reservists are being called up ‘in preparation for various scenarios.’
Citing a military source, Israeli news site Mako reported that there is a possibility of retaking the Netzarim corridor within a few hours should fighting restart on Saturday.
An explosion occurs following an Israeli air strike on a residential building in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip in July last year
Israeli forces could expand the area by several kilometers within as little as 24 hours of the assault resuming, the source added.
Israeli forces only pulled back from the key corridor in recent days as part of the ceasefire deal with Hamas.
The four-mile-long axis separates northern Gaza from the south. When the ceasefire began last month Israel allowed Palestinians to cross it to return to their homes, many of which have been reduced to rubble after more than a year of war.
The fragile ceasefire allowed thousands of Gazans to return home to the north of the strip after being displaced earlier in the conflict.
There are fears that many could be displaced again and face increasingly desperate conditions if fighting does resume and aid is halted.
The IDF has kept forces inside Gaza throughout the ceasefire, and has stepped up their presence in recent days.
‘Forces from 162nd Division, 143rd Division and 99th Division under the Southern Command have been deployed at several points in the Gaza Strip region to strengthen the defensive layer for the residents of the western Negev and the State of Israel,’ the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said on Friday.
A Hamas official earlier said that Israeli hostages could only be brought home if the ceasefire was respected, dismissing the ‘language of threats’ and saying it only ‘complicates matters’.
‘Trump must remember there is an agreement that must be respected by both parties, and this is the only way to bring back the (Israeli) prisoners,’ senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
Hamas has said Israel has violated the ceasefire with several deadly shootings as well as by holding up some aid deliveries and impeding the return of Gazans to the strip’s north.
Israel denies holding back aid and says it has fired on people who disregarded warnings not to approach Israeli troops.
Or Levy, Eli Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami, hostages held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, are released by Hamas militants as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, February 8, 2025
The IDF confirmed today that its forces carried out a airstrike in the southern city of Rafah this morning targeting two suspects who had tried to smuggle a drone into Gaza.
In what appeared to be an attempt to justify a potential IDF resumption of fighting in Gaza, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview published today that Israel cannot allow Hamas to use the ongoing ceasefire to rebuild itself.
‘Part of the challenge here is that Hamas continues to use networks to smuggle in weaponry and aid for themselves to reconstitute themselves,’ Rubio told NewsNation.
‘Israel can’t allow that to happen. You can’t allow Hamas to use the ceasefire to rebuild itself and recover strength,’ he added. ‘It’s a ceasefire, but it’s not a stupid ceasefire.’
US President Trump has said he does not think that Hamas will make the Saturday deadline for releasing the hostages and threatened to ‘let all hell break out’ if the terror group does not return all captives.
A Hamas spokesman astonishingly lashed out at Trump, saying there was no place ‘for the language of threats’ – roughly 14 months after the terror group slaughtered more than 1,100 Israelis during the October 7 incursion, while also kidnapping and raping hundreds.
On Monday the group said it was indefinitely scrapping a scheduled hostage release, claiming Israel had violated the ceasefire agreement that was agreed last month.
