Hamas’s response to a new cease-fire proposal was met with optimism by mediators, but details emerging from its counter-proposal on Wednesday, including a demand for a full Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza, revealed many of the same obstacles that have stymied previous ones. efforts to end the Israel-Hamas war.
Under the militant group’s proposal, both sides would observe a three-stage ceasefire for 135 days, each stage lasting 45 days, during which hostages and Palestinian prisoners in Israel would be released. It calls on the Israeli military to leave Gaza permanently – a demand that Israeli officials have so far publicly rejected.
Neither Hamas nor Israel have officially released details of the proposal, which it submitted to Egyptian and Qatari mediators on Tuesday night. A Hamas spokesman declined to comment, and the Israeli prime minister’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
But the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, considered close to Hamas ally Hezbollah, published a leaked version of Hamas’s counter-proposal on Wednesday, offering the closest look at its terms for ending the fighting. A senior Hamas official and an Israeli official with knowledge of the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the text in Al-Akhbar matched Hamas’s counterproposal.
Hamas’s willingness to negotiate under a broad framework drawn up by Qatar, Egypt, Israel and the United States at the Paris talks late last month has been widely seen as a positive step.
But a key point of contention between Israel and Hamas has been the length of the truce: Hamas is demanding a permanent ceasefire, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged Israel will fight until “total victory”.
During the second phase, talks aimed at achieving “complete calm” and an end to military operations by both sides must be completed, according to the counter-proposal.
The Paris framework outlined plans that would begin with a six-week truce, but Hamas’s counterproposal fleshes it out with many more details not contained in the original Paris framework, including the number of days each phase of the deal would last.
According to Hamas’s proposal, in a first stage, Israeli forces would withdraw from the residential areas of Gaza. In the next phase, the Israeli army would leave Gaza.
During the first two phases, Hamas would release Israelis and foreign nationals held hostage in the Gaza Strip, while Israel would release some of the more than 8,000 Palestinians held in its prisons. During the third phase, both Israel and Hamas will exchange bodies held in custody.
About 100 hostages remain alive in Gaza, the vast majority abducted in the October 7 Hamas attack, as are the bodies of more than 30 others, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office.
As part of the first phase, Hamas demands the release of all Palestinian women, children, elderly and sick Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. In return, Hamas would release all hostages in the same categories still held in Gaza, except for the female soldiers.
Another 1,500 Palestinian prisoners will also be released in the first phase, including 500 serving long sentences for their involvement in deadly attacks against Israelis. Hamas would select the names of 500 prisoners serving long sentences, the document said.
Last week, Mr Netanyahu vowed that Israel would not release thousands of Palestinian prisoners or withdraw Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip under the terms of a ceasefire agreement. “We will not settle for anything less than total victory,” Mr Netanyahu said in a speech in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Palestinians would also be allowed to return to their homes across the Gaza Strip during the first stage of the truce, under the Hamas counter-proposal, which would also impose a significant increase in humanitarian aid entering the coastal enclave. It requires at least 500 trucks of aid, fuel and other goods to enter Gaza every day.
Mr Netanyahu said Israel would not allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza as long as fighting continued there.
Analysts close to Hamas argued that the group would not be able to offer concessions on the thorniest issues in the negotiations.
“Keeping an occupation soldier in Gaza would be a defeat and a disaster,” said Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, a Palestinian analyst close to Hamas who was released from an Israeli prison in 2011. “No one would accept this.”
Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, said in a televised interview Tuesday night that the group’s leadership would support a gradual cease-fire and a gradual Israeli withdrawal if the process eventually leads to a final truce.
“Israel wants to take all the hostages and then have complete freedom to return to war, killing and killing,” Mr Hamad told al-Mayadeen, the Lebanese television station. “But in the end, we need a text that clearly guarantees a comprehensive ceasefire and the withdrawal of the occupying forces.”
