Hamas broke a humanitarian truce last week in order to avoid releasing Israeli women who endured rape or other atrocities in its custody, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s spokesman has suggested.
“It seems one of the reasons they don't want to turn women over that they've been holding hostage, and the reason this pause fell apart, is they don't want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Monday. “Certainly, there is very little that I would put beyond Hamas when it comes to its treatment of civilians and particularly its treatment of women.”
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Miller offered that explanation for the collapse of the truce last week hours after Hamas issued a statement denying that the terrorists engaged in any “raping” despite photo and video evidence of dead women and survivors with apparent signs of sexual assault. Yet he tempered the claim when reporters pressed him to clarify whether the U.S. government has established that Hamas scuttled the truce in order to avoid releasing the women.
“The humanitarian pause, which resulted in a release of hostages, was negotiated with some very clear terms, and that was that children and women would be the first priority to be released,” Miller said. “They broke the deal, came up with excuses why. Ultimately, I don't think any of those excuses were credible, and I shouldn't get into any of them here. But certainly one of the reasons that a number of people believe they refuse to release them is they didn't want people to hear what those women would have to say publicly.”