On Saturday night, a senior Hamas official said the group would not accept a truce in Gaza that does not entail a comprehensive end to the war, according to The Economic Times.
The official said, who asked not to be named, decried Israeli efforts to obtain a deal on releasing hostages without linking it to ending the aggression on Gaza:
Hamas will not agree under any circumstances to an agreement that does not explicitly include a cessation of the war on Gaza. There will be no agreement without a complete cessation of the war and the withdrawal of the occupation from the entire Gaza Strip.
In turn, a senior Israeli official said earlier Saturday that Hamas’s failure to drop its demand for an end to the war was creating difficulties in reaching an agreement.
The Hamas delegation returned to Egypt on Saturday to give its response to the proposed pause in the nearly seven-month war. An Israeli official, however, said the country would only send a delegation to Cairo if it saw “positive movement” on the hostage deal. The Hamas official said late Saturday the talks had ended for the day after “no developments.”
Mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the United States waited for Hamas to respond to a proposal for a 40-day cessation of hostilities and an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. In the end, the mediators were unable to agree on a new truce similar to the week-long truce that freed 105 hostages, including Israelis, in exchange for Palestinians held by Israel last November. The Israeli official said:
Hamas has requested that the agreement include a clear and explicit provision stating, “Agreement on a complete and permanent ceasefire,” and so far Israel has rejected this point until now.
Hamas said the main difficulty in reaching a ceasefire was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to launch an offensive on Rafah, a town in southern Gaza that is overrun with displaced civilians, despite multiple calls from its main ally, Washington, not to do so. Sources inform that the Israeli prime minister was “personally hindering” a Gaza truce deal due to “personal interests,” cautioning that if Israel goes ahead with plans for a ground offensive in Rafah it would be at its peril.
“We are eager to reach an agreement, but not at any cost,” the Hamas official said, adding that if no deal is struck Israel would bear “full responsibility for insisting on entering Rafah instead of ceasing the aggression.” Further added: “We confirm that invading Rafah will not be a walk in the park, and the occupation will pay a heavy price for any adventure it embarks on, and it will end in failure.”
