The director of Mada al-Carmel Center for Studies, Muhannad Mustafa, said that the timing of the recording published by the Izz al-Din al-Qasim Brigades – the military wing of the “Hamas” movement – of one of the captured Israeli soldiers has several internal and external indications.
In his speech to an episode of “Beyond the News” program (7/6/2021), he explained that Hamas, by publishing the recording, wants to accumulate its steps by creating progress in the political file after the military progress it has achieved, so it chose the prisoners’ file as it is one of the most important files it has. The Palestinian people, it also seeks to influence Israeli society by putting pressure on the government to get a deal done quickly.
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He stressed that the appearance of Marwan Issa, the deputy chief of staff of al-Qassam, after the war on Gaza as well, comes in the context of psychological warfare, and that Israel failed to assassinate any of the resistance leaders, and that they are active on the ground, and the recording that was published about the Israeli soldier gives greater credibility.
On the Israeli government’s handling of the exchange deal, Muhannad Mustafa confirmed that the candidate for prime minister in Israel, Naftali Bennett, is more extremist in the prisoners’ file than the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he has often criticized the prisoner exchange deal in 2011 in which the captured soldier Gilad Shalit was released, noting that The families of the captured soldiers did not deal with the file as the Shalit family dealt in the past by putting pressure on the Israeli government.
He added that during the past years that followed the Shalit deal, work was done to create awareness in Israel to oppose any future prisoner exchange deals.
Al-Qassam Brigades had revealed an audio recording of one of the captured Israeli soldiers in Gaza, in which he appealed to the Israeli government to work to recover its prisoners. The recording, which was shown exclusively as an investigation of the “What is Hidden is Greater” program on Al Jazeera, is the first of its kind for the captured soldiers of the Al-Qassam Brigades who went missing in the war on Gaza in 2014.
On the other hand, Israel Radio’s Military Affairs correspondent Eyal Alima said that the recording published by Al-Qassam did not find credibility in Israeli society, because it was not an Israeli soldier, but rather part of Hamas’ media propaganda. The families of the two captured soldiers in Gaza denied that the recording was for any of their sons.
He added that when Hamas detained the former soldier Gilad Shalit, it published videos of the captured soldier, which created a state of popular sympathy in Israel that forced the government to go to negotiations for his release, but this time it published an audio recording, and this is weak evidence of the credibility of its possession of any prisoners, he said. saying.
He added that what Hamas is doing will not force Israel to enter into a deal with it, according to which it will release many Palestinian prisoners, as happened in the past.