Hamas accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday of preventing a ceasefire in Gaza by adding new conditions and demands to a US-backed Israeli truce proposal, after the latest talks conducted through mediators.
The Palestinian terror group said it had received the latest response from Israel, following talks in Rome involving Israel, the United States, Egypt, and Qatar.
Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on the latest Hamas allegation. Israel says that Hamas is impeding a deal.
Israeli demonstrators, who have taken to the streets weekly, sometimes in the tens of thousands to demand a hostage release deal, have also accused the prime minister of prolonging the war for political ends. So have many of the hostages’ families.
“It is clear from what the mediators conveyed that Netanyahu has returned to his strategy of procrastination, evasion, and avoiding reaching an agreement by setting new conditions and demands,” Hamas said in a statement on Monday.
The terrorist organization accused Netanyahu of retreating from a proposal previously presented by mediators, which it said had already been based on an “Israeli paper.”
Unnamed Hamas sources told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that one of Netanyahu’s new conditions was a refusal to release 100 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in exchange for the Israeli hostages being held captive by Hamas.
According to the report, Netanyahu was also refusing to release 15 Palestinian prisoners serving “long prison sentences” and insisting that some of the prisoners who would potentially be released in the deal be exiled and not allowed to return to the Palestinian territories.
Washington, which sponsors the talks, has repeatedly said a deal is close; the latest talks are over a proposal President Joe Biden unveiled in May.
Hamas wants a ceasefire agreement to end the war in Gaza, while Netanyahu says the conflict will stop only once Hamas is defeated. There are also disagreements over how a deal would be implemented.
Mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the US, have repeatedly said doors to more negotiations remain open, with both Israel and Hamas voicing readiness to pursue them.
The war in Gaza broke out on October 7 with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages.
It is believed that 111 of the hostages remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 39 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Seven hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 24 hostages have also been recovered, including three abductees mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 39,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 331.