Hamas has condemned Israel\u2019s decision to postpone the release of more than 600 Palestinian prisoners, saying its claim that the captives\u2019 handover ceremonies are \u201chumiliating\u201d was false and a pretext to evade Israel\u2019s obligations under the Gaza ceasefire agreement. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin \u201cNetanyahu\u2019s decision reflects a deliberate attempt to disrupt the agreement, represents a blatant violation of its terms, and shows the occupation\u2019s lack of reliability in implementing its obligations,\u201d Ezzat El Rashq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said in a statement on Sunday. Israel delayed the release of 620 Palestinian prisoners scheduled to be released on Saturday after Hamas upheld its side of the ceasefire deal by releasing six Israeli captives from Gaza, the last group of living captives to be freed under the ceasefire\u2019s first phase. Netanyahu earlier on Sunday said freeing Palestinians would be delayed until Hamas ends its \u201chumiliating ceremonies\u201d while releasing Israeli captives, issuing a new demand not spelt out in the ceasefire agreement. \u201cIn light of Hamas\u2019 repeated violations \u2013 including the disgraceful ceremonies that dishonour our hostages and the cynical use of hostages for propaganda \u2013 it has been decided to delay the release of terrorists that was planned for yesterday [Saturday] until the release of the next hostages is ensured, without the humiliating ceremonies,\u201d Netanyahu\u2019s office said in a statement. Hamas accused Netanyahu of playing \u201cdirty games to sabotage and undermine\u201d the deal. \u201cThe prisoner handover ceremony does not include any insult to them, but rather reflects the noble humane treatment of them\u201d, Hamas said, referring to the staging of the captives\u2019 release, as it called on mediating nations to ensure Israel sticks to the terms of the deal. Since the ceasefire came into effect on January 19, Hamas has released 25 Israeli captives in high-profile handovers, with masked fighters parading the captives on stage. The ceasefire deal does not categorically define how Hamas and Israel should release the Israeli captives and the Palestinian prisoners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hamas has condemned Israel\u2019s decision to postpone the release of more than 600 Palestinian prisoners, saying its claim that the captives\u2019 handover ceremonies are \u201chumiliating\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23072,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}