The Hamas-run health ministry has warned that it is not equipped to combat the spread of the coronavirus owing to acute shortages of medicines, laboratory supplies and other medical equipment.
Israel, Hamas call for prisoner swap talks
Israel has conditioned any future coronavirus aid to Gaza on the release of four Israelis held by Hamas; Hamas says it will not negotiate over humanitarian aid but wants Palestinian prisoners freed.
Tuesday 07/04/2020
A Palestinian man playing the role of Israeli soldier Oron Shaul stands in a mock jail during a rally in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners
GAZA - Israel called on Tuesday for the immediate resumption of talks on the return of four Israelis held for years in the Gaza Strip after the Palestinian territory's Hamas rulers said they might be willing to move forward on the issue.
Last week, Israel linked any future coronavirus aid to Gaza on progress in efforts to recover two soldiers who went missing in the 2014 war and two civilians who separately slipped into the enclave. Hamas holds all four.
The Islamist group has never stated whether the two soldiers are dead or alive, but neither has it provided a sign of life, as it has done in a previous similar case. Israel has said that the soldiers are dead.
Hamas had previously said that returning the four would require negotiating a prisoner swap and would not be done in exchange for humanitarian aid, which it called a "separate track" of negotiations. But some reports suggest that the group's leadership may be willing to condition the release of the Israeli prisoners on the delivery of humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
Hamas is also using the presence of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israel to pressure Tel Aviv for their release, amid worries that the coronavirus could spread in Israeli jails.
In a statement on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said his national security team "stands ready to take constructive action with the goal of returning the fallen and the missing and of ending the affair, and are calling for an immediate dialogue via mediators".
In past rounds of talks, Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations have served as intermediaries.
Yehya al-Sinwar, Hamas chief in Gaza, has rejected the linkage to coronavirus aid. But on Thursday, Sinwar said he saw "a possible initiative to revive this issue" of the Israelis held in the territory if Israel frees jailed Palestinians.
"A prisoner swap will exact a big price" from Israel, he told Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV, saying that were it to start by releasing sick, old and female prisoners "we may offer something partial in return".
Gaza's healthcare system is near collapse after several wars between Hamas and Israel, as well as 13 years of a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade, which have kept the enclave in a state of economic stagnation.
According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, Israel currently holds some 4,500 Palestinian "security detainees" and prisoners in overcrowded prison facilities.
In regard to the status of the prisoners, B'Tselem says that the "figures from the military are received with a significant time delay and offer few details regarding inmates’ legal standing." Although Israeli officials publicly cast Palestinian prisoners as being militants, there are many people from the occupied Palestinian territories in Israeli detention for being in Israel "illegally".
There are also hundreds of people incarcerated under Israel's system of "administrative detention" without trial or charge, whose sentences can be indefinitely extended by the Israeli military.
