Hamas: We exchanged some ideas with mediators with the aim of stopping the aggression on Gaza

A responsible source in Hamas announced yesterday, Wednesday, that the movement exchanged some ideas with mediators with the aim of stopping the war on the Gaza Strip.

The source, whose identity was not revealed by the movement, said, according to what was published on its account on the Telegram platform: “We exchanged some ideas with the mediating brothers (Egypt and Qatar) with the aim of stopping the aggression against our Palestinian people,” and did not reveal further details about those ideas.

In contrast, the Israeli Foreign Intelligence Service (Mossad) said that the mediators conveyed to the negotiating team Hamas’s response to the prisoner exchange proposal, and that Tel Aviv will study it, according to a Mossad statement published by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, via the X platform.

In response to this, the private Hebrew Channel 12 said, "The broad outlines of the deal were formulated before the Israeli army took control of the Philadelphi Corridor in Rafah (south), so even if Hamas agrees, a fundamental disagreement is expected to occur over the continued presence of the Israeli army in the corridor."

The channel quoted an unnamed Israeli political source as saying: "Even if Hamas responds positively to the broad outlines, the negotiations will take a long time."

Last week, Netanyahu sparked a political storm and anger among the families of the prisoners when he told Channel 14, a private channel close to him, that he was prepared for a partial deal to return some of the prisoners held in Gaza, stressing the need to resume the war after the truce to complete its goals.

However, Netanyahu backtracked on his statements, telling the Knesset plenum: “We will not end the war until we return all the kidnapped, living and dead, and we are committed to the Israeli proposal that US President Joe Biden welcomed.”

At the end of last May, Biden announced that Israel had submitted a new proposal for a three-stage agreement that included a “prisoner exchange” in the first two stages, “maintaining the ceasefire” in the second stage, and “reconstructing Gaza” in the third stage.

With the mediation of Qatar, Egypt and the United States, the Palestinian factions in Gaza and Israel have been conducting faltering indirect negotiations for months to reach an agreement that would be the second of its kind since the outbreak of the war on October 7, 2023, which resulted in more than 125,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that claimed the lives of dozens of children.