A ceasefire and a hostage deal in the Middle East are still being negotiated. According to media, Israel’s government expects Hamas to also reject the latest proposal. The terrorist militia already sees itself as a winner.
According to media reports, the indirect negotiations over a hostage deal in the Gaza war have reached a critical point. The leadership in Israel assumes that the militant Islamist Hamas will officially reject the latest offer for an agreement on the release of Israeli hostages and a ceasefire, the “Times of Israel” quoted a government official as saying.
According to the report, the war cabinet had previously met to discuss a possible start to the controversial ground offensive in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip.
Hamas is sticking to its demands for an end to the war
The leader of Hamas in the contested coastal area, Jihia al-Sinwar, believes that he can survive an attack on Rafah, the US newspaper “Wall Street Journal” quoted Arab negotiators who negotiated with him. Al-Sinwar is believed to be in tunnels beneath Gaza.
An agreement now depends on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Al-Sinwar, whose future is at stake in this war and whose calculations leave little room for a compromise, wrote the Wall Street Journal. Netanyahu’s political survival depends on his far-right coalition partners. They had recently threatened to end the government if the hostage deal proposed by the mediators in Cairo was implemented and an operation in Rafah was called off.
Hamas leader is playing for time
Al-Sinwar, on the other hand, believes that he does not have to make a deal, the newspaper quoted an expert as saying. According to Arab mediators, the Hamas leader believes he has already won the war, regardless of whether he survives it or not. Because he brought the suffering of the Palestinians and the conflict with Israel to the center of global attention.
Al-Sinwar’s goal is to secure the release of hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons in exchange for hostages in the Gaza Strip and to reach a deal that ends the war and ensures the survival of Hamas, it said. In messages passed on to Arab mediators by Hamas’s military wing, Al-Sinwar indicated that time was on his side. International pressure on Israel increases the longer he waits.
Hamas sends delegation to Cairo
Hamas announced on Thursday that it would send another delegation to Egypt to complete indirect negotiations on a hostage deal. According to Egyptian state-affiliated television channel Al-Kahira News, a Hamas delegation is expected to arrive in Cairo within the next two days to continue negotiations.
In the evening, in front of the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv, dozens of demonstrators again demanded an agreement on the release of the hostages still in the Gaza Strip. Relatives of those abducted held up pictures of the hostages and counted out loud to 209 – that’s how many days the hostages have already been in the power of Hamas and other extremists.