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07-03-2024
CAIRO: An exchange of Palestinian prisoners and Israeli hostages in Gaza can only happen after a ceasefire, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said on Tuesday, as ceasefire talks in Cairo between Hamas, Egypt and Qatar continued with no sign of a breakthrough.
Hamdan, speaking at a press conference in Beirut, repeated his group’s conditions for a deal; an end to Israel’s military offensive, a withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, and the return of displaced Palestinians to homes they have fled in other parts of Gaza.
“In the past two days, the movement presented its position on the proposal put forward by the brotherly Qatari and Egyptian mediators. We reaffirmed our conditions for a ceasefire, a full pullout from the Strip and the return of the displaced from areas they left, in particular in the north,” he said.
The humanitarian situation is particularly dire in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of residents are believed to have remained despite Israeli orders to evacuate.
The United Nations has been unable to deliver food aid to the north since Jan. 23. Israeli authorities have denied access to UN aid convoys, which their troops have fired on.
The United States on Saturday carried out the first of what it said would be a series of humanitarian air drops of food into Gaza but Hamdan told reporters: “We say to Washington, what is more important than sending aid is stopping its supply of weapons to Israel.”
The Biden administration has been racing against the clock to secure a ceasefire before Ramadan, which is expected to begin March 10, fearing any aggressive military push by Israel during the Muslim holy month would only further inflame tensions across the region.
Biden said Tuesday that without a deal by Ramadan, the situation in Israel and specifically Jerusalem would be “very, very dangerous.”
Negotiators have been gathered in the Egyptian capital Cairo since Sunday for talks on a deal, but Israel did not send a delegation, an Israeli official told media, despite increasing international pressure to end hostilities and allow for a desperately needed surge of humanitarian aid.
An Israeli official told media that the reason behind the decision was that Hamas had not responded to two Israeli demands, a list of hostages specifying which are alive and which are dead; and confirmation of the ratio of Palestinian prisoners to be released from Israeli prisons in exchange for hostages. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
