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DUBAI | TASS | Palestine’s radical Hamas movement announced that it responded positively to the latest proposal about ceasefire in Gaza and release of hostages, put forward by US President Joe Biden.
“During all stages of negotiations, Hamas demonstrated its positive attitude, necessary for achieving a comprehensive and sustainable solution, based on our people’s legitimate demands to end aggression, withdraw [Israeli troops] from Gaza, enable the return of displaced persons, restore infrastructure and hold a prisoner swap. Realizing its responsibility before the nation, Hamas reacted positively to the latest proposal about ceasefire and release of prisoners,” the movement said on its Telegram channel.
Hamas statement says the Israeli government remained reluctant to conclude the agreement, despite the Palestinian movement’s approval and support of it.
“Hamas received proposals from mediators on May 5 and endorsed it on the following day by giving its response, which the mediators and all parties described as positive and reassuring. Meanwhile, Israeli [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu responded to it by assaulting Rafah and stepping up aggression against our people all across the Gaza Strip,” the statement says.
The movement called upon the US administration to put pressure on Israel in order to secure the ceasefire deal based on Biden’s proposals.
The document also said that Israeli officials never publicly declared their support to the proposal, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claims that Israel had no objections to parameters of the draft deal.
On May 31, US President Joe Biden announced his three-phase Israel-Palestine ceasefire plan, with each phase lasting six weeks. The first stage envisages a complete ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from populated localities in Gaza and the release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian inmates from Israeli prisons. Apart from that, the parties are supposed to begin talks during this stage, with the ceasefire staying in place until they reach an agreement. Phase two provides for the release of all surviving hostages, including the military. The third stage will see the beginning of the reconstruction of the war-devastated Gaza Strip.
On the same day, Hamas said that it was positive about Biden’s initiative but stressed that it would agree to look at the proposals only after the Israeli side declared its commitment to the same principles. However, on the following day, Hamdan said that the Biden plan’s provisions indicate that Israel only want to release its hostages but is not going to withdraw its forces from the enclave.
On June 11, Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan has confirmed reports that Hamas has handed over its response to US President Biden’s Gaza settlement initiative to the Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
The situation in the Middle East sharply escalated following an incursion of Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip into Israel on October 7, accompanied by killings of residents of Israeli settlements near the border and taking more than 200 hostages, including children, women and elderly people. Hamas cast the attack as a response to Israeli actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Israel declared a complete siege of the Gaza Strip and started striking the enclave and parts of Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also taking place in the West Bank.
