Father of hostage tells Netanyahu: You can’t just blame Hamas

 The father of an American held captive by Hamas has warned Benjamin Netanyahu that he cannot just blame the terror group for keeping the hostages.

Ruby Chen, whose son Itay was believed to have been taken captive and killed on Oct 7, claimed that the Israeli prime minister had been ignoring the families’ demands to secure the captives’ immediate release.

Mr Netanyahu will meet Donald Trump at the White House on Monday for talks on halting Israel’s offensive in Gaza City.

Earlier, Hamas claimed to have lost two of its hostages in an Israeli air strike. The terror group called for a 24-hour ceasefire to relocate the unnamed pair and gave the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) unprecedented information on their whereabouts in Gaza City.

Mr Chen said Mr Netanyahu’s proposal to seize control of the war-torn enclave was “like playing Russian roulette” with the remaining hostages.

He added: “He has an obligation to the hostages because this happened on his watch. He can’t just blame Hamas all the time. It’s easy to blame others, but he has to step up and take responsibility as well.”

Mr Trump prides himself on his full support for Israel, but his patience with Mr Netanyahu has shown signs of wearing thin following Israel’s botched attack on Hamas leaders in Qatar earlier this month.

On Thursday, he vetoed Israeli annexation of the West Bank – a proposal mooted in response to a string of countries, including the UK, recognising Palestinian statehood.

“I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” Mr Trump said, following a lengthy in-person meeting with Arab leaders in New York. “It’s not going to happen.”

The president has also proposed a 21-point peace plan for ending the war in the enclave, leaked to Arab media, under which Hamas officials would be granted amnesty and immunity in return for releasing the remaining hostages within 48 hours.

The plan also stipulated that Israel would not “occupy or annex Gaza, and the IDF will gradually hand over territory it currently occupies”.

On Sunday, Mr Netanyahu told Fox News that he was “working with” Mr Trump’s team on the plan to end the war, amid reports he had cleared his diary to prepare for Monday’s crunch talks.

The US president expressed optimism that a deal can be reached, writing on Truth Social: “We have a real chance for greatness in the Middle East. All are on board for something special, first time ever. We will get it done.”

The meeting marks Mr Netanyahu’s fourth trip to Washington this year. The Israeli prime minister faces increasing pressure to end the war, both at home and abroad.

On Friday, hostage families led a demonstration outside the United Nations General Assembly in New York during Mr Netanyahu’s speech, holding signs of their loved ones’ faces and chanting: “They’re running out of time.”

The Hostage and Missing Families Forum condemned the prime minister for attempting to “rewrite history” by only reading out the names of the 20 hostages who are still alive.

“The families of the fallen and the families of the hostages whose lives are in grave danger are outraged that only the names of the living hostages are being read out,” it said, accusing him of choosing “time and again to torpedo, thwart and bomb the chances of returning them home”.

Chen, 19, was the youngest American hostage taken by Hamas. After months of holding out hope that their son would return, Mr Chen and his wife were informed by the IDF that he had been killed when his tank brigade was attacked on October 7 and his body taken to Gaza, where it remains.

Mr Chen said Mr Netanyahu’s language reduced his son’s death to a statistic.

He added: “I think the prime minister’s play is to say: ‘I got 80 or 85 per cent of them out,’ and he feels like that’s maybe enough. We say to him: each life is 100 per cent.”

A dual citizen, Chen was brought up in Israel but spent his summers visiting family in New York and watching his beloved New York Celtics basketball team.

Mr Chen urged the Trump administration to find a path to secure the release of his son, saying: “The US government has an obligation to my family as US citizens.”

Without confirmation on how his son died or the whereabouts of his body, Mr Chen said that he and his family had been left unable to grieve.

“There’s no comfort in the news we received. We are looking for that certainty to say, this is what happened. Not 95 per cent, not 98 per cent: 100 per cent,” he said. “That is why, in my book, even after we were notified [of his killing] that does not make him less of a hostage.

“I feel like we are in an alternative universe where time is different, and we want to be beamed back – but we can’t until he comes back.”