Hamas has agreed to a Gaza ceasefire proposal it received two days ago from mediators Egypt and Qatar, the Palestinian group’s chief said on Saturday.
“Two days ago, we received a proposal from the mediators in Egypt and Qatar. We dealt with it positively and accepted it,” Khalil al-Hayya said in a televised speech.
“We hope that the [Israeli] occupation will not undermine [it],” said Hayya, who leads the Hamas negotiating team in indirect talks aimed at securing a ceasefire in the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza that erupted in October 2023.
Security sources had told Reuters on Thursday that Egypt had received positive indications from Israel over a new ceasefire proposal that would include a transitional phase.
The proposal suggests Hamas release five of the Israeli hostages it is holding each week, the sources said.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said it had held a series of consultations according to the proposal that was received from the mediators, and that Israel had conveyed to the mediators a counterproposal in full co-ordination with the United States.
Reuters asked the prime minister’s office if it had also agreed to the ceasefire proposal, but it did not immediately respond.
Early in the week, an Egyptian official described the proposal to the Associated Press, saying Hamas would release five living hostages, including an American-Israeli, from Gaza in return for Israel allowing aid into the territory and a weeks-long pause in fighting.
Israel would release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to brief media on the closed-door talks.
Israel a week and a half ago ended its ceasefire with Hamas by launching a surprise wave of strikes that killed hundreds of people. The White House blamed Hamas for the renewed fighting.
Israel has vowed to escalate the war until Hamas returns the 59 hostages it still holds – 24 of whom are believed to be alive.
Israel also wants Hamas to give up power, disarm and send its leaders into exile.
On Saturday, Israel widened its ground operations in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt.
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
[ Israel admits firing at ambulances in Gaza after Palestinians say rescuers missing in Rafah ]
Frustrated by the threat to remaining hostages in Gaza, families and others rallied again Saturday evening to call for a deal that would bring everyone home.
“The price of your war is the life of the hostages,” some protesters chanted in Tel Aviv. Minor scuffles broke out with police.
“War will not bring our hostages home, it will kill them,” Naama Weinberg, cousin of deceased hostage Itay Svirsky, told a weekly gathering of families in Tel Aviv.
The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s October 7th, 2023, attack into Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 50,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants.
Israel’s bombardment and ground operations have caused vast destruction and at their height displaced some 90 per cent of Gaza’s population of more than two million people.
Early this month, Israel again cut off all supplies to Gaza to pressure Hamas to accept new terms to the ceasefire that started in mid-January.
Israel had baulked at entering negotiations over the truce’s second phase, which were meant to begin in early February.
Under the agreement, phase two was meant to bring the release of the remaining 24 living hostages, an end to the war and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza – Associated Press and Reuters
