[News] Hamas Announced Postponing Prisoner Exchange: Why and Why Now?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

palestinechronicle.com 
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/hamas-announced-postponing-prisoner-exchange-why-and-why-now-analysis/> 



  Hamas Announced Postponing Prisoner Exchange: Why and Why Now?- Analysis

February 11, 2025
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Al-Qassam spokesperson Abu 
Obeida. (Image: Palestine Chronicle)

*By Robert Inlakesh 
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/robert-inlakesh>*


          Hamas is currently in a position where it must try its best to
          negotiate the entry of sufficient aid into Gaza, while also
          ensuring the war ends and a post-war administration is formed
          so that the territory can be revived and rebuilt.

On Monday, Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman, Abu Obeida, issued a 
statement asserting that in light of Israeli ceasefire violations, it 
will be postponing the prisoner exchange planned for the coming weekend. 
While this is now being framed as the potential reason for the 
agreement’s collapse, it is instead a negotiating tactic at a crucial 
juncture.

“The handover of the Zionist prisoners who were scheduled to be released 
next Saturday…will be postponed until further notice,” announced the 
military spokesperson of Hamas. This message was also accompanied by “we 
affirm our commitment to the terms of the agreement as long as the 
occupation commits to them”.

While Israeli politicians instantly began claiming that Hamas had 
violated the ceasefire agreement, with the infamous partner in Israeli 
PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, Itamar Ben-Gvir, calling 
for an immediate bombing campaign, nothing has materially changed on the 
ground yet. However, provocative statements like Ben-Gvir’s are 
predictable and also important in this equation.

Following Abu Obeida’s statement, in which he accused Israel of 
violating the ceasefire terms, the Hamas movement decided to publish a 
list of multiple Israeli violations of the deal, including:

  * “Delaying the return of displaced persons to northern Gaza.”
  * “Targeting civilians with shelling and gunfire, resulting in
    numerous casualties across the Strip.”
  * “Obstructing the entry of essential shelter supplies, such as tents,
    prefabricated houses, fuel, and equipment needed for rubble removal
    and body retrieval.”
  * “Delaying the delivery of critical medical supplies and resources
    necessary for restoring hospitals and the health sector.”

While Hamas stated that it had itself recorded the above-mentioned 
ceasefire violations, these have been well documented by rights groups, 
journalists and have been mentioned by United Nations officials. Yet, 
Israel’s violations began some 15 minutes after the planned 
implementation of the deal – on January 19 at 8:30 AM (local time).

Killings of civilians through airstrikes and sniper fire continued 
throughout the following weeks, amongst the other ceasefire violations, 
however, Hamas had chosen not to open fire; or even release threatening 
statements in retaliation such as what occurred today.

*Why is Hamas Doing This Now?*

The knee jerk analyses that are being offered by most analysts in the 
immediate aftermath of the Hamas statement are almost entirely centered 
on a kind of he-said-she-said approach to the issue. As these disputes 
rage on about who violated the ceasefire and which side seeks the 
collapse of the deal, it is important to look deeper into the context.

As noted above, Hamas had chosen to not fire a single bullet or rocket, 
nor threaten to postpone the release of Israeli captives, through weeks 
of daily Israeli ceasefire violations. There were moments when Israeli 
forces were executing children, delaying the return of displaced 
Palestinians to their homes for 24 hours and restricting essential items 
from reaching the Gaza Strip, all of which would have given Hamas the 
moral imperative to obstruct the deal in order to end such violations of 
the agreement.

If Hamas held off from retaliation for emotional, legal and moral 
reasons, then it indicates that their statements from today were 
strategically calculated and not simply reactionary. The timing of the 
Qassam Brigades spokesman’s statement happened to coincide with the 
return of the Israeli negotiating team from Doha, which also appears to 
be connected.

Within the past week, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has changed the 
composition of his negotiating team, reportedly floating the idea of an 
extension to the first phase of the ceasefire agreement. These 
amendments to the course of the negotiating process have been compounded 
by US President Donald Trump’s threats to take over the Gaza Strip, in 
addition to ethnically cleansing the territory’s population.

Israel has also now withdrawn its forces from the Netzarim Corridor that 
intersects northern and central Gaza, deserting what would be a key 
military position should they seek to return to the territory, while 
most of the displaced refugees from the north of the territory have also 
returned to their destroyed neighborhoods.

Another factor to consider is that the Israeli PM has managed to keep 
his far-right coalition together so far, yet, key lawmakers from within 
the Religious Zionism bloc have threatened to collapse the government 
should it approve phase two of the three-phase ceasefire agreement. 
Interestingly enough, Donald Trump’s rather outlandish and highly 
illegal proposals have managed to persuade Netanyahu’s hardline 
coalition partners that the ceasefire is a good deal, quite possibly 
helping to save it.

Emboldened by the American President’s hardline rhetoric, Netanyahu has 
since gone on a number of tirades in which he has not only endorsed the 
idea of ethnically cleansing the people of Gaza to neighboring nations, 
but has even said that Saudi Arabia should carve out part of its 
territory to make a Palestinian State.

These extreme threats have now managed to ironically unite West Asia, 
not with Israel but against it. Contrary to the claims of Netanyahu and 
Trump, about Riyadh abandoning its position on requiring a viable path 
to a Palestinian State in exchange for a normalisation agreement with 
Tel Aviv, it has only doubled down. In fact, the condemnatory rhetoric 
of Israel, coming from Saudi Arabia, is the strongest in decades.

Hamas has been center stage in this sudden, seemingly overnight regional 
shift, which has certainly factored into their decision to begin 
applying pressure on the Israeli negotiating team.

The Hashemite ruler of Jordan, King Abdullah II, has been publicly 
starkly opposed to the US-Israeli proposal to transfer hundreds of 
thousands, if not close to a million Palestinians, out of Gaza and into 
his territory. While the Egyptian military has reportedly been 
mobilizing to deal with any major destabilizing development. Both Cairo 
and Amman fear the potential repercussions for the survival of their 
leadership should a mass displacement from Gaza occur.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has also been placed in a difficult position. 
Like Jordan and Egypt, it is friendly to not only the US, but also 
Israel. Yet, taking into consideration the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s 
government in Syria, in addition to the popular moods of the Saudi 
people in support of the Palestinian cause, normalizing with Israel 
right now and enabling a major regionally destabilizing event that could 
even cause the collapse of the Jordanian Monarchy, is a risk they are 
not willing to currently take.

Another major factor here is both the warming of relations between 
Riyadh and Tehran, combined with the recent weakening of the Iranian-led 
Axis of Resistance. This essentially means that there is little to gain 
from joining an anti-Iran alliance, likely re-igniting its frozen 
conflict in Yemen, with little role for it to actually play. In such a 
scenario, Saudi Arabia would be fully subordinate to the US, which 
limits future opportunities in the emerging multipolar world. Saying 
this, the threat of destabilization inside Saudi Arabia goes both ways, 
if they go too far in opposition to the Americans and Israelis, they 
could also incur their wrath.

Hamas decided to release its statement, doing so with a region that is 
now united against the Israeli-US invasion/ethnic cleansing plan. The 
Arab and Islamic nations will soon likely adopt a joint platform and 
help in putting forth urgent proposals to see the Gaza ceasefire’s 
implementation through the second and third phases. This includes 
throwing their weight behind the success of a post-war administration in 
the Gaza Strip.

Israel on the other hand has little leverage in this situation, other 
than to implement plans that will inflict mass regional destabilisation 
and return to carrying out its catastrophic genocide in Gaza. This is 
why, so far, the Israeli threats against Gaza have been centered around 
what their response will be if there is a failure to exchange prisoners 
on Saturday, which is five days away.

If Israel carries out airstrikes in the coming days, it has two options, 
to completely collapse the ceasefire or to just carry out random raids 
that will kill civilians, but not in a way that would lead to the 
ceasefire’s dissolution. However, there is also a trap in the Israelis 
deciding to carry out any significant raids on Gaza, because this will 
then give Hamas – and perhaps its ally Ansarallah – the excuse to 
respond in kind.

If Hamas fires volleys of rockets toward Israeli settlements, possibly 
even Tel Aviv, it will serve as a great embarrassment to Israeli Premier 
Benjamin Netanyahu and could even encourage his extremist allies to 
threaten the collapse of his coalition. In the minds of Netanyahu’s 
partners like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, they believe that 
Hamas must be crushed and the entirety of the Palestinian population be 
driven out. Therefore, Hamas’ rocket fire could trigger emotional 
reactions from them that put Netanyahu in a difficult political position.

Meanwhile, the families of Israeli captives who are still held in Gaza 
have already taken it upon themselves to blockade main roads in Tel 
Aviv, demanding the implementation of the ceasefire agreement.

Hamas is currently in a position where it must try its best to negotiate 
the entry of sufficient aid into Gaza, while also ensuring the war ends 
and a post-war administration is formed so that the territory can be 
revived and rebuilt. Although it may be a dangerous gamble on their 
behalf, it appears to be an attempt to use the current climate to 
pressure the Israelis to allow the passage of sufficient aid, while also 
paving the way to the success of the next phases of the ceasefire deal.

The wildcard here is a potential US-Israeli plot to use insane levels of 
violence that will sink the entire region into chaos.


/– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. 
He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed 
this article to The Palestine Chronicle. /

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