Hamas is ready to have a “complete compromise” in order to carry out a prisoner exchange, according to Hamas official Ghazi Hamad who spoke on Thursday with NBC correspondent Matt Bradley.
Hamad’s terms were the same as Hamas’s previous demands: Release every single Palestinian prisoner in Israel in exchange for the 240 Israeli hostages.
The Hamas official also maintained that the civilian casualties on October 7, 2023 were the result of unexpected “complications on the ground” – a term he also used in his interview the previous week with Lebanese media in which he said that Hamas would repeat the events of October 7 over and over again.
‘We will repeat October 7 again and again’
In his interview with NBC, Hamad was challenged to clarify that statement about repeating the October 7 massacre. He largely deflected, bringing up the massive number of Gazan civilians who have been killed since the start of the war. He said that the people of Gaza have been suffering for 17 years and it is the legal right of Palestinians to “fight against the occupation.”
He furthered his point by bringing up the plight of Jews in Nazi Europe. “It is according to international law,” Hamad said. “According to all of the regulations and the law. In Europe, you right against the Nazis.”
Hamad also made it clear that Israel would have to draw back its offensive in Gaza in order to have any kind of hostage negotiation. “We want to stop the aggression and killing and the slaughters on our people. And after that, we can talk about hostages, about the prisoners, about everything. But first, they have to stop the aggression.”
Ghazi Hamad’s previous interviews with international media
The week before, Hamad was interviewed by Lebanese media outlet LBCI and was firm in his stance that the Palestinians must remove any Israeli presence from the State of Israel and reclaim the land. He stated that “the al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time. There will be a second, a third, a fourth.”
He also claimed that all of Hamas’s actions were justified because the Palestinians are “victims of the occupation.”
In an even earlier interview with the BBC, Hamad stormed out of the room when asked about the massacre of 1,400 civilians on October 7.
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