Hamas leader threatens to prosecute Blinken for criticizing their refusal to agree to a hostage deal

Blinken said Hamas and not Israel was responsible for the failure to reach a hostage release agreement.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

A Hamas leader threatened to prosecute outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken as a “partner in a war of extermination” after he criticized them for rejecting a hostage agreement, the Times of Israel reports.

Osama Hamdan, a member of Hamas’ politburo, said at a news conference in Algeria, “His (Blinken’s) statements are misleading, and we do not trust them, and his partnership in the crimes against our people will be pursued legally.”

In a New York Times interview, Antony Blinken defended Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pursuit of Israel’s military goals and Gaza. He said Hamas and not Israel was responsible for the failure to reach a hostage release agreement.

Blinken said, “One of the things that I found a little astounding … you hear virtually nothing from anyone since Oct. 7 about Hamas.”

He added, “Why there hasn’t been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender — I don’t know what the answer is to that. Israel, on various occasions, has offered safe passage to Hamas’s leadership and fighters out of Gaza. Where is the world?”

Hamdan denied that Hamas was responsible for the impasse in negotiations and said, “We are committed to ending the aggression, demanding the withdrawal of the enemy from the Gaza Strip, and ensuring that relief and reconstruction efforts proceed without any conditions imposed by Israel.”

Hamdan has often identified Blinken as being the “problem” in the hostage negotiations, and his remarks to the New York Times further angered him.

Blinken told the Times, “What we’ve seen time and again is Hamas not concluding a deal that it should have concluded. There have been times when actions that Israel has taken have, yes, made it more difficult. But there’s been a rationale for those actions.”

Antony Blinkenhostage dealOsama Hamdan