Why doesn't Hamas give Israeli children and captives back?

Husam Zomlot answered a similar question in this video:

While good on you that you mention these hostages and good that they are released they should be released I mean the Israeli hostages but why didn't you ask me about the Palestinian hostages the children that have been released that have been in Israeli prisons before the 7th of October you know we have hundreds of Palestinian children being grounded by Israel over years and years without charge without trial without access to lawyer or their own families and parents this is really unconscionable it doesn't even belong to our today and our humanity and there for this is a time to really focus on the overall system of Oppression.

I'll really tell you what's the difference; the difference is the first is done by individuals but the second is done by a state that sponsored an army the arm invades innocent people's houses in the middle of the night in the early hours of the morning wake up these children in the most terrifying way. It is disgraceful to even draw any Equity between a state that is a member of the UN that is Israel and its responsibility under international law and between individuals. So in fact the the lack of equity is to focus on "responsible" actions that they should perform in full accordance with international law.

Mehdi Hasan mentioned in this video:

First, for everyone who believes that Benjamin Netanyahu and his government of far-right fascists and racists are fighting their war in Gaza in order to rescue the hostages, how do they explain the fact that Netanyahu had a chance to bring all of the civilian hostages home right at the very beginning? It's the view of Rubinstein who was a spokesman for the families of the Israeli hostages and said "we learn that Hamas offered on October 9th or 10th to release all the captive civilians in its hands if the IDF did not enter the Gaza Strip but the government rejected the offer". In fact, the Washington Post reported on a similar proposal at the end of October saying "Hamas was proposing to release all foreign civilian hostages in exchange for a 5-day ceasefire Israeli civilian hostages would be released if additional demands were met including the release of Palestinian women and children in Israeli prisons and the opening of the Rafah border crossing".

Second, Israeli officials have said time and again that the war won't end until Hamas is destroyed regardless of whether the hostages are released. Smortich, Israel's Finance Minister, made clear that he was opposed to any hostage release deal that stopped Israel from going into Rafah now you might say that's just smoke TR he's not in charge well prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said this week that he would invade Rafah with or without a deal on the hostages.

Third, the hostages at the core of this conflict at the heart of this current round of killing and violence aren't just Israelis, they're Palestinians too because while we're all aware of the fact that around 250 hostages were taken from Israel by Hamas and other armed groups on October the 7th including, shamefully, children and around 130 hostages remain in captivity in Gaza we don't really mention the thousands of Palestinians who have been rounded up detained held without trial tortured sexually abused without any charges let alone any convictions in Israeli prisons and I'm not even talking about just since October the 7th I'm talking about before October the 7th.

When the bad faith apologists for Israel pop up on TV or online to justify that violence and to robotically and cynically repeat "what about the hostages" ignoring all of the three things that I just pointed out to you, treat that dishonest refrain with the contempt it deserves.

In this video, Dr. Omar Suleiman mentions:

So Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson was one of the few co-sponsors of a bill that has been on the floor of Congress for years, initially sponsored by Congresswoman Betty McCollum, to penalize Israel for its detention of child prisoners. Thousands of children arbitrarily detained, put in military courts, solitary confinement, and yes, sexual violence, that's been documented by human rights organizations, against them, and there have been no repercussions. So I want you to think about this. You know, just the thought of conditioning aid to Israel, you know, so that it doesn't indiscriminately bomb entire populations has not been able to find any home in mainstream American politics for years.

Just trying to stop Israel from picking up children and throwing them into military prisons, where they disappear for decades at times, has not found any thrust in mainstream American politics, whereas any resolution that is pro-Israel will make it past both chambers relatively quickly. When people talk about Israeli hostages and then talk about Palestinian prisoners, there's already a problem with that framing. First of all, all 2.2 million people in Gaza are hostages. Every Palestinian that lives under occupation is a hostage, but all of those prisoners that have been picked up, women, children, innocent people, with absolutely no process of making sure that they're treated right or given fair trials, or even given a communication line with their families or with any government to help them, is absolutely criminal. All of those prisoners are also hostages. And when you already propose this idea that there are Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, you're already implying that one group is complicit in their own devastation, whereas another group has had devastation visited upon them entirely out of their own doing. And so it's important for people to learn about children prisoners, who are indeed hostages to an apartheid system, and even what happened during that four-day truce, which all of us hoped would be extended and become permanent, where 150 Palestinian prisoners were released. Israel just went and picked up another 135 in the West Bank and threw them in prisons. That's what I mean when I say you're not addressing the root of the problem. The root of the problem is the occupation. The root of the problem is the apartheid. The root of the problem is the desperation that then drives the creation of all sorts of circumstances that will only further lead to the devastation of everyone, right?

The root of that problem is the dehumanization of the Palestinian, because no one is raising alarms for those Palestinian hostages in Israeli military prisons, no one's putting up their pictures, and no one's talking about who they are and their human stories, and the violence that's been wreaked against them at every level. So if you don't solve, not just the root of occupation, but also the dehumanization that drives the occupation, which is, unfortunately, so pervasive right now in the discourse, then you're going to continue to have this gap in how the world sees the plight of the Palestinians and how, unfortunately, the American public sees the problem of the Palestinians.

Abraham Accords is nothing but an agreement in which you slap the name of Abraham on arms deals. In exchange for countries being able to undertake their own unholy pursuits, they use one of the holiest names in history and continue to erase the main victims of this atrocity. And so the Abraham Accords are an insult to humanity, an insult to the Palestinians, and an insult to the name of Abraham.