A member of Hamas's political bureau, Ezzat al-Rashq, accused the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of seeking to end the issue of Palestinian prisoners through a policy of starvation, after his failure to determine their locations and the occupation's bombing of them. He affirmed that Netanyahu and his Nazi government bear full responsibility for this approach, which began with a war of starvation and thirst against the Palestinian people, and its effects have also extended to the prisoners.

Al-Rashq pointed out that the Palestinian resistance treats its prisoners according to the teachings of their religion and the values of their humanity, as they feed them from what they eat and give them drink from what they drink, unlike the brutal policies pursued by the occupation forces. He explained that previous exchange operations showed that the prisoners emerged from the occupation's grip in good health, while today they suffer from hunger, emaciation, and weight loss, a scene that connects the suffering of the prisoners with the besieged people of Gaza.

Al-Rashq noted that the unjust siege imposed by Netanyahu on Gaza also included the prisoners, as they were not spared from the yoke of brutal starvation. He confirmed that images of hunger on the faces of children, women, and the elderly in Gaza, before the image of the Israeli soldier Avitar David, constitute damning evidence of the existence of widespread famine in the sector. He clarified that starvation is part of Netanyahu's plan to end the issue of the prisoners by killing them through hunger, after his failure to locate them or kill them through direct bombing.

In a related context, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, released a clip showing the Israeli prisoner Avitar David suffering from severe weight loss due to the ongoing starvation policy. The Ministry of Health in Gaza announced that the death toll due to the Israeli starvation policy has risen to 175 Palestinians, including 93 children, since the onset of the aggression on October 7, 2023.

Israel estimates that there are 50 Israeli prisoners in Gaza, of whom 20 are alive, while more than 10,800 Palestinians are held in occupation prisons suffering from torture, hunger, and medical neglect, leading to the deaths of many of them, according to Palestinian and Israeli human rights and media reports.

Despite Hamas's readiness to release the Israeli prisoners all at once in exchange for ending the war, the withdrawal of the occupation from Gaza, and the release of Palestinian prisoners, Netanyahu refuses this and imposes new conditions, including the disarmament of Palestinian factions, and insists on reoccupying the sector. Since the onset of the aggression on October 7, 2023, Israel has committed acts of genocide, while continuing the policy of starvation, having closed all crossings to humanitarian aid, leading to the spread of famine and reaching catastrophic levels.

These policies have resulted in the deaths of more than 210,000 Palestinians, including martyrs and wounded, most of whom are children and women, in addition to hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, and an increase in the number of missing persons, with the spread of famine claiming many lives.