hostages one of the few ways Palestinians can actually do anything to improve their lives

Genuine question, how has Hamas taking hundreds of innocent people hostage on October 7th improved the situation in Gaza or Israel in any way? Whose life is better today than it was a couple of months ago as a result?

International humanitarian law prohibits taking and executing hostages. Such acts are considered war crimes (GCI–IV Common Art. 3; GCIV Arts. 34, 147; API Art. 75) and can be tried before any national court, under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

The Convention defines a hostage taker as “any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person (‘hostage’) in order to compel a third party, namely a State, an international inter-governmental organization, a natural or juridical person, or a group of persons, to do or to abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage, commits the offence of taking hostages (‘hostage taking’)” (Art. 1 of Hostage Convention).

The Convention further specifies that not only those who commit such an act but also any person who attempts to commit or who participates as an accomplice in such an act or attempt is accountable and must be punished.

At any rate, regardless of whether you feel Hamas’ jihad is justified or not (it isn’t, in fact), hostage taking is an international war crime. The Geneva Convention is the bare minimum standard on this, and as such our opinions and political leanings are irrelevant.

The bare minimum Hamas can do now is to release the remaining hostages and surrender themselves to the IDF to stand trial, so that the innocent people of Gaza can start slowly putting their lives back together.