Prisoner Exchange Talks to Begin Only after Halt to Israeli Attacks on Gaza: Islamic Jihad
Speaking on the sidelines of a “Liberation of Palestine” conference in Istanbul, Turkey, on Monday, Muhammad al-Hindi, the deputy secretary general of Islamic Jihad, said there will be no deal on the exchange of prisoners with Israel until the war stops completely and the Zionist forces fully withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
He said the Islamic Jihad and Hamas have presented their views on this issue to Cairo in a joint letter.
The resistance has a trump card and that is the captured Israeli forces, he said, adding that the Israeli regime and the US seek to take this card away from the resistance but that is not going to happen.
If the captured Israelis are going to be released, the should be no Palestinians remaining in the Zionist regime’s jails, he stated.
Al-Hindi also underlined the high morale of resistance forces despite 100 days of relentless Israeli onslaughts on the enclave.
He added that the Palestinian resistance has the control of the field in Gaza while the Zionists have only relied on bombing the region from faraway.
Israel has launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian resistance groups carried out the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on Oct. 7.
The Al-Aqsa Flood Operation was carried out in response to the Israeli atrocities in occupied territories and its violations of the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
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It included missile attacks on occupied cities and ground assaults on settlements near Gaza. That operation plus retaliatory missile strikes by Palestinian resistance groups left hundreds of Israelis dead. Also, more than 200 Israelis were captured by resistance forces.
At least 23,968 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and 60,582 injured as a result of Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.
According to the UN, 85% of the population of Gaza is already internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure is damaged or destroyed.
