AGI – The fate of the 120 hostages remaining in Gaza is crucial to any agreement aimed at putting an end to the long and bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas. But a senior Hamas official told CNN that “no one has any idea” how many of them are alive, and that any deal to release them must include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Hamas spokesman and member of the political bureau Osama Hamdan said this in an interview with the US broadcaster.
“The Israelis only want a ceasefire for six weeks and then they want to go back to fighting”, the Hamas spokesperson is convinced, pointing the finger at “the Americans who have not yet managed to convince the Israelis to accept a ceasefire permanent” as part of the hostage release agreement. To accept the truce proposal put forward by Israel, Hamas needs “a clear position on complete withdrawal from Gaza and ending the siege” and guarantees that “the Palestinians themselves determine their future and the reconstruction” of the Strip, added Hamdan, according to whom the latest proposal on the table – an Israeli plan announced publicly for the first time by US President Joe Biden late last month – does not meet the Islamist group’s demands for an end to the war.
Negotiations on the US-backed proposal have intensified in recent days, but appear to have stalled on Wednesday after Hamas submitted its response to the document, 12 days after first receiving it. For Hamas, Hamdan said, the duration of the ceasefire is a key issue. The fear is that Israel has no intention of completing the second phase of the agreement: the permanent end of the war and the complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza to be implemented only after further negotiations between the parties. “The end of hostilities must be permanent,” he said, “and Israel must withdraw completely from Gaza.”
The October 7 attack by Hamas against Israel was “a reaction against the occupation,” Osama Hamdan told CNN. “The Israeli occupation is responsible for all this,” he said from an office in Beirut. “If you resist the occupation, they will kill you, if you don’t resist the occupation, they will kill you or deport you out of your country. So what should we do, just wait?”, he said. Hamdan also dismissed as false reports that Sinwar said the deaths of thousands of Palestinians were a “necessary sacrifice.” “These are fake messages written by someone who is not Palestinian and outside Palestine.”
