Israel blocked the International Committee of the Red Cross from visiting Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric said earlier pressure to release hostages from Gaza could have saved lives.
Red Cross access
In an interview with The New York Times published Saturday, Spoljaric said the ICRC had pressed Israel and Hamas to prioritise the hostages’ release. The organisation couldn’t visit the hostages in captivity, and faced heavy criticism in Israel for failing to secure meaningful aid for them, including monitoring their conditions or providing basic humanitarian assistance such as medicine.
“Visiting hostages is much more complicated than bringing them back,” Spoljaric said. “And in my opinion, they should have come back unconditionally as of Day 1. But that’s not the reality in which we operate, and so we have to work with the tools we have.”
She said the aim was to negotiate the hostages’ release as quickly as possible. “And the longer it takes, the more complicated it becomes,” she said. “I personally think that the pressure should have come earlier in the negotiations. We could have saved more lives.”
Hamas seized 251 hostages on October 7, 2023. Several deals secured their release. The earliest came weeks after the Hamas-led massacre; the last came in October 2025. Of those abducted alive, 40 were killed in captivity, most by their captors and some mistakenly by IDF fire. Spoljaric said those deaths could likely have been prevented.
Prisoners and legal obligations
Israel barred the ICRC from visiting Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in retaliation. The High Court of Justice ruled the ban invalid, and the issue was beginning to be resolved.
Spoljaric told The New York Times Israel had “a legal obligation” to allow Red Cross visits, regardless of its reasons for preventing access. She also said Israel had, “in my opinion also a moral obligation,” to allow the visits in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.
During the war, Spoljaric met then-Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She held “tough discussions” with both. The ICRC is a neutral international body dedicated to aiding victims of war.
Gaza after the ceasefire
A U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted major fighting in the Gaza Strip, while the IDF continued near-daily strikes against people it deemed a threat. Spoljaric said her assessment of Gaza hadn’t changed since she described it to the BBC in 2025 as “hell on earth.”
“What I said about Gaza is still valid today,” she told The New York Times. “What happened to Gaza and in Gaza to Palestinians and Israelis supersedes every legal, moral and humane standard.” She added: “The worst now is the fact that people are deprived of human dignity.”