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The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, blamed Israel for the clashes with its fighters in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, holding the occupation fully responsible for the confrontation.
In a statement posted on its Telegram channel, the group said its fighters were defending themselves inside an area under their control after Israeli forces refused to allow them to withdraw safely from tunnels located within the yellow line.
The brigades said the recovery of bodies had been carried out under extremely difficult and complex conditions, noting that they met their commitments under the agreement but that retrieving the remaining bodies would require more technical crews and specialized equipment.
“We hold mediators to their responsibilities and call on them to find a solution to ensure the ceasefire holds,” the group said.
Observers say that beyond the field dimension of Al-Qassam’s latest statement regarding the fighters in Rafah, there is also a political aspect directed at international and regional mediators.
They note that the message urges mediators to act to ensure the continuation of the ceasefire and to prevent Israel from exploiting any field incident to undermine the existing agreement.
Israel began raising the issue of Al-Qassam Brigades fighters being present inside the city of Rafah on Oct. 19, less than 10 days after the cease-fire agreement went into effect.
At the time, the Israeli army announced that two of its soldiers had been killed in an ambush inside Rafah, a city under its security control.
Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump proposed a solution to the standoff involving the fighters inside the tunnels in Rafah, suggesting they hand over their weapons to a third party in exchange for an Israeli amnesty on the condition that they refrain from resuming combat activities.
The channel also quoted Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir as opposing the relocation of the fighters besieged in the tunnels, saying the “crisis must end either with their killing or their surrender.”
Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz issued orders to destroy and eliminate all Hamas tunnels in the Gaza Strip “down to the last tunnel,” according to his statement.
Channel 12 reported that Hamas warned Israel it would not be able to retrieve all the captives’ bodies unless it allowed the group’s fighters trapped in the Rafah tunnels to leave safely.
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