The fate of the 120 remaining hostages in Gaza is crucial to any deal to end the protracted and bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas.
But a senior Hamas official has told CNN that “no one has an 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.
In an interview with CNN’s Ben Wedeman, Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama Hamdan offered an insight into the militant group’s position on the stalled ceasefire talks, a view on whether Hamas regrets its decision to attack Israel given the mounting Palestinian death toll, and a commentary on the leak earlier this week of messages from its chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the man believed to be the ultimate decision-maker on any peace deal.
Speaking to CNN in the Lebanese capital Beirut, Hamdan said the latest proposal on the table – an Israeli plan that was first publicly announced by US President Joe Biden late last month – did not meet the group’s demands for an end to the war.
Hamdan, who has been part of the Hamas negotiations team on the ground, told CNN that the group needed “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves, the reconstruction, the (lifting) of the siege … and we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange.”
The US-backed ceasefire plan that was approved by the United Nations Security Council on Monday lays out a phased approach. In the first phase, there would be a six-week ceasefire in which some hostages would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners and the Israeli military would pull out of populated areas in Gaza. The second phase – a permanent end to the war and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza – would only be implemented after further negotiations between the two sides.
But Hamdan told CNN the duration of the ceasefire was a key issue for Hamas, which is concerned that Israel has no intention of following through with the second phase of the deal. The end of hostilities must be permanent, he said, and Israel must withdraw from Gaza completely.
“The Israelis want the ceasefire only for six weeks and then they want to go back to the fight, which I think the Americans, till now, they did not convince the Israelis to accept (a permanent ceasefire),” he said, adding that he believes the US needs to convince Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire as part of the deal.
