Hamas wants an agreement to end the war in the Gaza Strip. The group intends to exchange all Israeli hostages for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, a Palestinian spokesman said on Friday.
Hamas is ready to release all remaining hostages
Khalil Al-Hayya, the group’s leader in Gaza who heads the negotiating team, said the group would not accept interim agreements, taking a position that Israel is unlikely to accept and that could further delay an end to the devastating shelling that has resumed in recent weeks.
“Netanyahu and his government use partial agreements as a cover for their political agenda, which is based on continuing the war of extermination and starvation, even if the price is sacrificing all his prisoners (hostages),” Hayya said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The latest round of talks to restore the ceasefire and release Israeli hostages ended without an apparent breakthrough, Palestinian and Egyptian sources said.
Hayya also said Hamas accepted an offer by the mediators, Qatar and Egypt, to release some hostages in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel and to begin negotiations to implement the second phase of the ceasefire, which includes an end to the war and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. He accused Israel of making a counter-proposal with “impossible conditions.”
Egypt, which is acting as a mediator, has presented the Hamas group with a new Israeli proposal for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, but Hamas believes the proposal does not meet its demands.
Israel kills 25 in several attacks on northern, southern Gaza
At least 25 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed in a series of morning Israeli army strikes on different areas of the Gaza Strip.
According to Palestinian medical sources, in the northern part of the Gaza, in Tel al-Zatar neighbourhood in Jabalia, a strike on a residential house killed 10 people, among them 5 children.
In the same area, in Tuwwam, an airstrike on a tent housing internally displaced persons killed two people and injured six. A young Palestinian man was also killed in a strike on a civilian gathering place in Jabalia.
In southern Gaza, in the Bani Suhaila neighbourhood east of Khan Younis, a residential bombing killed 10 people from one family and injured dozens. Two more people were killed in a strike on a house near I’tisam Stadium in Khan Younis.
The Israeli army resumed large-scale strikes on Gaza on March 18, two months after a ceasefire in force since January 19.
Since then, 1,691 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women, children and the elderly, while more than 4,460 have been wounded. Since the start of the war on October 7, 2023, the death toll in the Gaza Strip has reached 51,065, with 116,505 injured.
