Gaza ceasefire deal within reach if Israel stops setting new conditions: Hamas
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has described ongoing ceasefire talks in Qatar as “serious and positive,” saying that an exchange of captives for prisoners is within reach if the Israeli occupation stops raising new conditions.
This position was announced in a statement released on Tuesday, a day after an Israeli delegation arrived in Doha to meet with mediators.
The meetings follow a trip by David Barnea, who heads Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, to the Qatari capital on Wednesday, according to reports.
Qatar, along with the United States and Egypt, has been involved in months of behind-the-scenes negotiations for a Gaza truce and the release of Israeli captives.
However, apart from a one-week pause in fighting late last year, successive negotiations have failed to halt the war.
On Monday, Israel's minister of military affairs Israel Katz indicated that Israeli negotiators have "not been this close to an agreement" for the release of captives in Gaza since the November 2023 truce.
A senior Hamas official based in Doha also stated on Monday that negotiations for a deal were "closer than ever before" but warned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could still "disrupt the agreement as he has done every time before."
It is estimated that over a hundred Israeli captives still remain in Gaza out of more than 250 who were detained by Hamas fighters during their historic October 7 attacks on the Israeli regime.
Hamas says it will only release the captives if Israel completely halts its aggression on Gaza and agrees to release hundreds of Palestinians held in the regime’s prisons.
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