to report «iusnews»; Hamas Spokesman Osama Hamdan said on Monday that mediators have repeatedly come close to reaching an agreement on a captive release, but he accused Israel of repeatedly changing the terms at the last minute.
Speaking to Al-Jazeera by phone Hamdan said the most recent arrangement would have seen Israel release 200 children and 75 women from Israeli jails in exchange for the release of 50 captives over a five-day period.
He said Hamas’s condition was also that Israel allow unfettered aid access to Gaza via the Rafah crossing with Egypt, including the entry of fuel into the besieged Palestinian enclave.
“When all those arrangements were done, the Israelis postponed that … It shows that they are not willing to go forward,” Hamdan told Al-Jazeera.
“They did not reject [the deal]. There was an agreement about this and at the end, they added more conditions,” he added.
He said the Israelis were seeking more names of the captives, which he said Hamas has been unable to collect because many were taken by “different factions” in Gaza.
“If the Israeli side came back to the mediators today and said we are ready to implement [the agreement], things will go forward,” he said, adding, “I believe that the mediators are doing their best in order to bring them [the Israelis] back.”
Meanwhile, Abu Obaida, the spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, said that Qatar is working on securing an exchange between the group and Israel that would involve the release of 200 Palestinian children and 75 women from Israeli prisons.
In exchange, the Qassam Brigades would release between 50 and 70 captives – all women and children.
“The enemy had asked for the release of 100 captives,” Abu Obaida said.
The Brigades asked for a five-day truce that would include a ceasefire and allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip.
“But the enemy is evading and procrastinating. It is jeopardising not only the lives of Palestinian civilians but it also doesn’t care about killing its own captives,” Abu Obaida said.
He gave an example of an Israeli woman who was taken alive into captivity, but was killed in an Israeli air strike a few days ago, according to Abu Obaida.
Last week Hamas Official Ghazi Hamad said Israel is not concerned “with the safety of the prisoners in Gaza, regardless of their nationalities” during its “indiscriminate bombings”, adding, “We confirmed our readiness to release foreign prisoners, but Israel is obstructing that.”
Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories in response to the occupying regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.
The Al-Qassam Brigades said that they were holding 200-250 people captive, including Israeli soldiers.
Since the start of the aggression, Israel has killed at least 11,240 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, and injured about 29,000 others.
