The leader of the Hamas political office, Khalil al-Hayya, said Thursday that all the remaining captives would be released from Gaza if Israel puts an end to his war against the enclave.
Hamas, he said, is ready for “complete negotiations of packages, including the release of all Israeli captives in exchange for a agreed number of Palestinian prisoners, the complete withdrawal of the Gaza Strip’s Occupation Army, from the start of the reconstruction and lifting of the seat”.
“The management of Hamas and the factions of resistance wish to stop the barbaric assault and the genocidal war,” he added, noting that it was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who denied the cease-fire agreement that started on January 19 and lasted six weeks.
The agreement was supposed to have three phases, but when it was time for Israel to withdraw entirely from Gaza in phase two, it reproduced a total seat on all goods, food and aid to the arrival of the strip.
On March 15, Netanyahu had resumed a large -scale war against Gaza.
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Until now, more than 51,000 Palestinians have been killed in the past and a half year, local health officials said.
Hayya said that the mediators of Egypt and Qatar “returned to communicate with us to find a way to get out of the crisis created by Netanyahu and his government, and we have accepted their proposal at the end of Ramadan, despite our conviction that Netanyahu insists to continue the war and the aggression to protect his political future”.
The sacred month ended on March 30, after which Israel presented a counter-proposition which said that Hayya said “impossible conditions”, demanding that Hamas disarm its ranks.
“It is a natural right of our people,” to resist the occupation, he said.
Hamas, he said, will not be “part of the Netanyahu partial agreements policy” because the group is looking for a permanent end of war, not a temporary truce.
The agreement
In this vein, Hamas’ comprehensive package offer also includes talks to full accounting of Israel of all Palestinian prisoners, both of the Cisjordanie and Gaza occupied, in exchange for the list of Israeli captives remaining in Gaza.
The names would then be offered for swaps.
Main representatives of Hamas approached an independent agreement directly with the United States on captive exchanges last month, when President Donald Trump’s orders, his hostage envoy, Adam Boehler, went to Doha to engage in unprecedented face-to-face meetings.
Washington appointed Hamas a terrorist organization in 1996.
According to sources that informed the New York Times, secret meetings made progress until the Israelis winded it, and then disclosed them to the media. Things collapse quickly.
In his remarks on Thursday, Hayya congratulated the comments of Boehler in Al Jazeera earlier this week, in which he promised that the War of Israel against Gaza would end “immediately” if all the captives are released.
But Boehler also put the ball entirely at the Hamas courtyard.
“They can reach out to any time,” he said. “Hamas can end this.”
