Israel did not send a negotiating team to Cairo for hostage deal talks, an Israeli source told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
On Monday, the BBC reported, citing a senior Hamas official, that Qatari and Egyptian mediators submitted a new proposal to end the Israel-Hamas War.
According to the unnamed official, the proposed framework would see a ceasefire for five to seven years, all Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails, a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, and a full stop to the fighting.
Israel has not commented on the new ceasefire proposal at the time of publication.
Hamas negotiators were supposed to arrive in Cairo for a consultation, the BBC reported.
This comes after Hamas rejected Israel’s latest proposal, which pushed for the release of 10 hostages in exchange for 45 days of a ceasefire.
‘Impossible conditions’
“We will not accept partial deals that serve [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s political agenda,” Hamas negotiating team head Khalil al-Hayya said in a statement. The terror group claimed its rejection was based on the continuation of the war.
Al-Hayya claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had proposed “impossible conditions that do not lead to an end to the war or to a withdrawal.”
Israeli hostages can be released if the Israeli government agrees to end the war, fully withdraw from Gaza, and allow for the reconstruction of Gaza to start, he said.
Netanyahu has said that the war would not end until Hamas is completely ended and the hostages are returned, because he did not want to endanger the Israeli public.
“I will not surrender to murderers. Such a surrender would endanger you, the public. If we yield to their demands, all the tremendous achievements we have gained will be lost,” Netanyahu said on Saturday.
“Hamas has once again rejected a proposal to release half of the living hostages and many fallen soldiers. Hamas rejected the proposal and demanded an end to the war. If we accept Hamas’s demands, it would mean that Israel can be forced to surrender,” he added.
Hamas is ready to allow any other Palestinian entity to govern Gaza, agreed upon “at the national and regional level,” the unnamed Palestinian official told the BBC. The official said this could be the Palestinian Authority or a new administrative body.
The source claimed that Hamas’s current negotiation effort was earnest and said that the terror group had shown “unprecedented flexibility.”
The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas fell apart after disagreements from both sides were raised about specifics regarding the second phase of the ceasefire.
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