Hamas received a new proposal for a 60-day truce and hostage release in two phases, an anonymous Palestinian official said Monday, as Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani was reportedly en route to Egypt amid intensifying talks.
No details of the proposal were not released and it was not immediately clear how many hostages would be freed in each phase.
“The proposal is a framework agreement to launch negotiations on a permanent ceasefire,” a Palestinian official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The official added that “Hamas will hold internal consultations among its leadership” and with leaders of other Palestinian factions to review the proposal.
The renewed diplomatic flurry comes as the international community tries to head off Israeli plans to step up the offensive in the Strip and capture Gaza City.
According to Qatari channel Al-Araby, the Gulf state’s leader was headed to Egypt’s El Alamein, and the Hamas delegation has been asked to provide a response to the proposal within hours.
Axios reporter Barak Ravid wrote on X that Al Thani was headed to Egypt after the talks on Sunday had not yielded satisfactory results. He was expected to meet with Hamas representatives and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
The talks have been mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, with Turkey involved in brokering their resumption last week.
According to Saudi channel Al-Arabiya, the new proposal represents a compromise between a partial ceasefire deal and an agreement that would fully end the war and release all the hostages, which Israel is now publicly demanding.
The proposal reportedly includes clauses amending Hamas’s response to the last proposal, which had dealt with a framework agreement for a 60-day ceasefire.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, visiting the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on Monday, said that “as we speak now, there are Palestinian and Qatari delegations present on Egyptian soil working to intensify efforts to put an end to the systematic killing and starvation.”
More than two weeks of negotiations in the Qatari capital Doha ended last month with no breakthrough.
While Israel has said it is demanding a deal that would see all the hostages released, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prepared to consider a partial ceasefire and hostage-release agreement with Hamas, despite his recent statements to the contrary, according to Hebrew media reports on Sunday, citing a senior Israeli official.
Channel 12 reported that an Israeli official involved in the negotiations recently told relatives of hostages that “if Hamas agrees to a partial deal under conditions that are acceptable here, don’t be surprised if the red line suddenly shifts.”
Channel 13, quoting a senior member of Israel’s negotiating team, said Netanyahu was willing to discuss “a ‘phased’ deal” with Hamas.
The reports came after the Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement on Saturday in which it insisted that Israel was strictly seeking a comprehensive deal in which all hostages were released at once and all of Netanyahu’s conditions were met, following claims that Hamas had renewed its willingness to pursue a phased ceasefire-hostage arrangement.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets on Sunday in a call for a hostage deal and end of the war.
Polls consistently show a large majority of Israelis are in favor of an end to the fighting if it would see the release of the captives held in Gaza.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 50 hostages, including 49 of the 251 abducted in the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.
They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive, and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 60,000 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.