Five days after Qatar delivered to Egypt medication purchased for dozens of Israeli hostages being held captive in the Hamas terror dungeons in Gaza.
For each single box of medicine, Hamas received 1,000 such boxes. The deal brokered by Qatar and France with Israel and Hamas was to ensure delivery of three months’ worth of urgent medication for some 45 hostages being held by the terror group, in exchange for humanitarian and medical aid for Gaza civilians. It is questionable, however, whether any real “civilian” in Gaza is receiving aid be it humanitarian or medical since Hamas hijacks the deliveries with tacit consent from international aid agencies in the enclave.
Likewise, Israel has not received evidence or confirmation that the hostages have received their medicine, which was delivered last Wednesday afternoon. Egypt’s Red Crescent medical response service (a branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross – ICRC) delivered the medicines to the Rafah crossing with Gaza by evening.
Hamas demanded and received assurance that ICRC would deliver all the medications to hospitals throughout Gaza, including the medications intended for the hostages.
The ICRC has repeatedly previously refused even to receive medications for the hostages when approached by Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal in-person request to the head of the agency. The collaboration between Hamas and the ICRC is utterly clear. And outrageous.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Monday (Jan. 22) with French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu at Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem, and asked the French Armed Forces Minister to convey to French President Emmanuel Macron his “deep gratitude for the latter’s role in delivering the medicines to the hostages in Gaza.”
Netanyahu noted that Israel is “still waiting for proof that the medicines have reached their destination” and emphasized that “implementation of the understandings must be monitored.”
Whether the medicine ever made it from the Hamas-run hospitals to their intended captive recipients is apparently anyone’s guess.
A spokesperson for the Israeli government ducked the question, referring JewishPress.com to the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF provided JewishPress.com with no response to the query when asked whether there is any evidence that the hostages had received their medicine.
One can estimate that if in fact the hostages had indeed received their medicine, that information would likely have been conveyed promptly.
In this and similar hostage scenarios “no news is good news” simply does not apply.
