Efforts to extend a “pause” in fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza failed in part because the Palestinian Islamist movement did not want female hostages to reveal what they had suffered, a US official said on Monday.
• Also read: Hamas says it “rejects lies” about rape during the Oct. 7 attack in Israel
• Also read: Dozens of Israeli tanks enter the southern Gaza Strip
Israel had halted its offensive in Gaza under a deal negotiated under the auspices of Qatar and the United States that included the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas during its bloody attack on Israeli soil on October 7.
Israeli authorities said Friday they were resuming their military offensive because Hamas had not released all of its female hostages.
“It seems that one of the reasons why they don’t want to release women they are holding hostage and why this breach has broken is because they don’t want these women to tell what they are told. They arrived while in custody,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
The spokesman declined to provide further details, emphasizing the sensitivity of the issue, but said the United States had “no reason to doubt reports of sexual violence attributed to Hamas.”
“There is very little that I think Hamas is not capable of when it comes to the treatment of civilians and particularly women,” he said.
On October 7, Hamas commandos killed 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities. In addition, 240 people were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip, of which 137 are still held hostage, according to the Israeli army.
In retaliation, the Israeli army launched bombing raids on the Gaza Strip – interrupted during a week of ceasefire – that have so far claimed 15,899 lives, 70% of them women and under 18, according to the Hamas Health Ministry in Gaza.
Israeli police also say they are investigating possible cases of sexual violence from October 7, including gang rape and body mutilation.
Israeli investigators have so far collected “more than 1,500 shocking and disturbing testimonies,” a police officer told Israel’s parliament last week, referring to “girls stripped naked above and below the waist” and recounting testimonies of gang rape, Mutilations and murders of a young woman.
Hamas “denied the allegations of rape and sexual violence, calling them “lies.”