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US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that a deal for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages is in the hands of Hamas, and a ceasefire was necessary to get more aid into Gaza.
“We must get more aid into Gaza,” Biden told reporters.
In response, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan on Tuesday said that an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and Israeli hostages in Gaza could only happen after a ceasefire, 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 the brotherly Qatari and Egyptian mediators put forward. 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.
Issues in delivering on humanitarian aid
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 January 23. 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.”
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