Zionist calls to incite families to press Hamas

The Palestinian ministry of prisoners’ affairs said Tuesday that the Zionist intelligence embarked lately on contacting families of long-serving detainees from the Gaza Strip to incite them to pressure the Movement of Hamas to soften its demands regarding the prisoner swap deal.

Information director of the ministry Riyadh Al-Ashqar stated that the Zionist entity uses this new cheap method to pressure Hamas into accepting its criteria for the swap deal.

Ashqar explained that the Zionist intelligence phoned a number of these families under the name of “the family committee for Nablus prisoners” and told them that the names of their sons were included in the deal and that it was keen on the release of their sons, but it needed their help to pressure Hamas.

The spokesman for the ministry added that the caller told the families that his name was Abu Khalil, the father of a Palestinian prisoner named Abu Al-Majd and that he hoped that the swap deal could take place in order for his son and theirs to enjoy freedom even if prisoners such as Abdullah Al-Barghouthi, Ahmed Saadat and Ibrahim Hamed were not released.

According to the spokesman, the caller also gave the families phone numbers he claimed for the offices of premier Ismail Haniyya and head of Hamas’s political bureau Khaled Mishaal so as they can urge them to accept the swap deal as it is.

Ashqar warned the families of prisoners against dealing with such suspicious phone calls, saying that these calls are aimed to press the captors of the Zionist soldier to have a weak deal meeting the Zionist conditions and to convince everyone that Hamas is the party that is impeding the deal.

He stressed that Hamas is doing its best to conclude an honorable swap deal meeting the expectations of prisoners and their families.