Hamas, Under Qatari Pressure, Agrees to Let Israel Send Medicine to Hostages

The Palestinian terror group Hamas has agreed to allow Israel to transfer lifesaving medicines to Israeli hostages in Gaza, under an agreement brokered by Qatar. In return, Israel has agreed to increase medical aid to Gaza — presumably for Hamas’s benefit.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced Friday evening:

At the directive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the director of the Mossad, David Barnea, approached Qatar with a plan to deliver much needed medicine for the hostages held in Gaza by the terror organization Hamas. This effort is part of Israel’s humanitarian aid mechanism for the Gaza Strip. The medicine will be delivered in the next few days.

The Times of Israel reported:

Israel has agreed to expand the entry of medications as part of the humanitarian aid entering Gaza for Palestinians as part of the agreement Qatar brokered with Hamas that will see medications transferred to the hostages in the coming days, an Israeli official tells The Times of Israel.

Negotiations were complex, as Hamas doesn’t want the transfer of medications to the hostages to lead to Israel discovering where exactly they’re being held, the official says.

…

The official says that Israel has been pushing from the get-go for medications to be transferred to Hamas, which has until this week refused to cooperate. The terror group buckled amid heightened pressure from Qatar, the official says.

Israelis have criticized the Red Cross for refusing to push hard enough to allow it to transfer medications to the more than 120 Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the 2021 e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now updated with a new foreword. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.