Hamas is not susceptible to public pressure about the hostages, International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on Thursday.
“The more public pressure we would seemingly do, the more they would shut the door,” she said.
Spoljaric spoke out after Netanyahu told her that the ICRC could do much more than it has to help the 135 hostages remaining in captivity in Gaza.
My goal, as you know in our conversations, is to see how we can “help the remaining hostages. You have every avenue, every right, and every expectation to place public pressure on Hamas,” Netanyahu told her.
“It won’t work,” she said.
Red Cross neglecting hostages in Gaza
Israel has been frustrated that the ICRC has not been granted access to the hostages in Gaza, so it can ensure that they are kept in good conditions and that their medical needs are being met.
Netanyahu offered Spoljaric packages of medicine to bring to the hostages. He spoke with her about the atrocities Hamas committed on October 7 when it killed over 1,200 people and seized some 250 hostages. Around 110 of those captives have since been freed.
"They’re doing something quite incredible. They’ve taken children, babies, women, old people, Holocaust survivors, festival participants. And after they shot hundreds, and murdered over 1,200 people, they took these people and they took them as hostages. Where’s that heard of?” Netanyahu said.
He addressed ICRC’s criticism of the high casualty count in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas. The terror group has asserted that close to 19,000 Palestinians have been killed in war-related violence. Israel has said that over 7,000 of those fatalities are combatants.
“There’s a difference between the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming and menacing of civilians, which is what terrorism is, and the unintended consequences, unintended casualties that accompany any warfare,” Netanyahu said.
“I want to express my gratitude for your help in securing the release of the hostages, but at the same time, some of the statements that have come out from your organization seem to not make the distinction that I’ve just made,” he stressed.