Hamas claimed Thursday that a guard had killed a male Israeli hostage in “revenge,” as negotiators met in Doha, Qatar, without representatives from the terror group present, in an attempt to reach a hostage-and-ceasefire deal.
The Times of Israel reported that Hamas claimed the shooting did not conform to its supposed “ethics”:
The spokesman for the military wing of Hamas says a guard who shot dead a hostage acted out of revenge and against the terror group’s protocols.
The IDF has not been able to confirm or deny the claims made by Hamas — that its guards on two separate occasions shot dead a hostage and seriously wounded two other female captives.
Meanwhile, an Israeli delegation arrived in Doha to attempt to finalize the details of a deal — even though Hamas has refused to attend, acting on instructions from its new leader, Yahya Sinwar, who insists that Israel agree to end the war as a condition of any agreement.
Israel’s Army Radio reported that David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, was meeting with U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief William Burns.
The Biden administration has placed huge emphasis on the talks, saying that they could also convince Iran not to attack Israel in retaliation for the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran, last month.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also under intense political pressure to reach a deal.
Some Israelis, however, are concerned that Israel will be forced to release convicted terrorist murderers in any deal, and that a deal will create perverse incentives for terrorist organizations to try to take more Israeli hostages in the future.
Hamas has been the roadblock to a further deal, following a brief November agreement that saw many female and elderly hostages released, along with most of the child hostages.
Hamas broke that truce by launching rockets at Israel.
Critics have said that Netanyahu has added new demands to the negotiations. The prime minister’s office has pushed back, saying that the only additions have been efforts to ensure the implementation of agreed-upon provisions of a potential agreement, and that Hamas has made many new demands to scuttle a deal.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
