Hamas has enough Israeli soldiers captured during its recent attack on Israel to convince the Israeli government to release all Palestinian prisoners held there, as per top Hamas leaderSaleh al-Arouri.
“We managed to kill and capture many Israeli soldiers. The fighting is still on,” Saleh al-Arouri, deputy chief of Hamas’s political bureau, told Al Jazeera on Saturday.
“Our detainees in [Israeli] prisons, their freedom is looming large. What we have in our hands will release all our prisoners. The longer fighting continues, the higher the number of prisoners will become,” added al-Arouri, who said senior officers were among those captured but did not provide any figures.
Nearly 5,200 Palestinians, including 33 women, 170 kids, and more than 1,200 people held in administrative detention, are now being held in Israeli jails, according to the most recent statistics from Addameer, a prisoner rights NGO.
The Israeli army has confirmed the deaths of soldiers and commanders as well as the capture of prisoners of war. It hasn't provided any numbers.
The organisation in charge of the Gaza Strip, Hamas, launched the largest attack on Israel in recent memory on Saturday, killing dozens of people and injuring hundreds more as fighters entered Israel under cover of a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza.
In the meantime, footage purportedly showing Israeli prisoners being transported alive into the Gaza Strip was released on Hamas's social media pages.
Following the murder of four Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, many Israeli settler attacks, particularly in Huwara, close to Nablus, and rising tensions at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, the surprise operation from Gaza took place.
According to the Ministry of Health for the enclave, Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip resulted in at least 198 Palestinian deaths and hundreds of injuries.