Hamas has demanded the release of a prominent figure serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli jail as senior world leaders are headed to Cairo, Egypt, to try to bridge the remaining gaps between Hamas and Israel.
Both Israeli and Hamas leaders expressed an openness to President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which he unveiled last Monday, but cautioned that there are still unresolved details that would need to be hammered out. These specifics have been the reason earlier attempts have not come to fruition or lasted.
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In Trump’s deal, Israel would release roughly 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in Israeli prisons — many of whom may be responsible for the murders of Israelis — as well as another 1,700 Palestinians who have been detained in the war.
Hamas has demanded the release of Marwan Barghouti, one of the most prominent Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, according to the Wall Street Journal. He is serving five life sentences after being jailed in 2002 in connection with attacks that killed five civilians during the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s that included several suicide bombings targeting civilians. Barghouti was the leader of the Fatah party in the West Bank.
Hamas also wants to secure the return of the bodies of Yahya and Mohammed Sinwar, two of the group’s most senior leaders, according to the outlet. Yahya Sinwar was the architect of the group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, which was the deadliest in Israel’s history. Israeli forces killed him in October 2024.
Yahya Sinwar spent 22 years in an Israeli prison until he was among 1,027 Palestinian prisoners released in a 2011 prisoner exchange that secured the release of one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas had kidnapped in a cross-border raid more than five years earlier.
Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy for the Middle East, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and former Middle East adviser, are among the officials expected to join the negotiations that began earlier this week. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani is also expected to join, according to a spokesman from the country’s foreign ministry, while Turkey’s state news agency, Anadolu, reported that the country’s intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalin, will also participate in the talks.
Trump’s proposal also calls for Hamas to release the remaining 48 hostages, about 20 of whom are still believed to be alive and have been held since the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, to be released within 72 hours.
Hamas is very hesitant to give up all of the hostages because it’s the only leverage it has in negotiations. Previous ceasefire agreements had the hostages released in batches.
Another contentious subject that Israel and Hamas have not been able to agree on is the timetable for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and how far it would draw back. Israeli leaders have maintained that they want to maintain the flexibility to resume operations if Hamas begins to reconstitute, and Hamas, alternatively, wants to secure a permanent end to the war to ensure its remaining survival.
Hamas has also not agreed to disarm, which is also a major sticking point and is why Israeli leaders want the right to restart operations in Gaza.
Several world leaders have endorsed this deal, but it’s unclear how mediators will be able to bridge these gaps to definitively end the war. There have been two temporary ceasefires, both of which collapsed before negotiators could figure out a long-term solution, but mediators faced these difficult questions then, too, and were unable to figure out a proposal to satisfy both Hamas and Israeli leaders.
Tuesday marked the two-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Hamas killed roughly 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 others. Israel has since gone to war against Hamas, trying to destroy its military capabilities and remove it from power in Gaza. Israeli forces have killed more than 65,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, but that total does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.