Hamas says it is ready to negotiate truce proposal

Jerusalem: The Palestinian militant group Hamas said Friday that it had responded positively to a new proposal for a 60-day Gaza Strip ceasefire with Israel and was ready to immediately enter negotiations on implementing it.

It was not immediately clear whether Hamas was demanding any significant changes to the proposal and whether any gaps could be easily bridged or create new hurdles to an agreement. The two sides have come close before to such agreements, only to see them unravel at the last minute over the details.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Israel had agreed to the conditions for a temporary truce, and he called on Hamas to do the same.

"The movement submitted the response" to mediators, Hamas said in a statement late Friday night, adding it was "characterized as being positive."

The proposal calls for hostage-for-prisoner swaps and negotiations leading to a permanent end to the nearly two-year-old war in Gaza.

Trump said this week that he had been pressuring Israel and Hamas to make a deal before a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to Washington on Monday.

"MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA," Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday, directing the message at Israel, before warning Hamas "it will not get better -- IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE" if it did not sign on.

Gideon Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, said there were "positive signs" in the efforts to reach a new ceasefire and that Israel was eager for talks to resume "as soon as possible."

The primary obstacle to getting a deal between Hamas and Israel has been the permanence of any ceasefire. Hamas has insisted on a lasting end to the war before releasing all remaining hostages. But Netanyahu said that Hamas' military and governing capabilities must be dismantled.

The war began with an Hamas-led attack from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023. It killed about 1,200 people, according to Israel, and some 250 other people were abducted to Gaza. Israel believes up to 20 living hostages remain in Gaza.

Israel's retaliation has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, including thousands of children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Almost all of the roughly 2 million Palestinian residents of in Gaza have been displaced at one point during the war, many of them repeatedly, and hunger is widespread.

People briefed on the new proposal have said it calls for the handover of 10 living hostages and the remains of 18 others during the 60-day ceasefire in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners.

The releases would be staggered over five stages, and Hamas would have to refrain from holding televised handover ceremonies like those it staged during the ceasefire earlier this year. The ceremonies infuriated Israelis, who saw them as humiliating.

Steve Witkoff, the White House's special envoy brokering the truce talks, had previously advanced a proposal for a 60-day cessation of hostilities that was supposed to lead to a broader deal.

As in the last truce, the new one would require Israel to pull back troops deployed in Gaza. But the details of that pullback were not immediately clear.

The new proposal also states that the United States and the Arab mediators, Qatar and Egypt, will ensure that serious negotiations to end the war will take place during the truce.

Netanyahu has resisted ending the war, with far-right members of his fragile coalition threatening to bring down his government if he agreed to such a deal.

While the truce talks were stalled, Netanyahu had been pushing Trump to target Iranian nuclear sites, which the U.S. leader ordered the United States to bomb in June.

Since that 12-day campaign against Iran ended late last month, the prime minister's popularity appears to have risen at home, possibly making him less reliant on the support of his far-right ministers.

But there is a new unknown.

Hamas has a new de facto leader in Gaza, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, who Israel says took over the military wing after its forces killed the former Hamas leader, Muhammad Sinwar.

Al-Haddad helped to plan the Oct. 7 attack and is thought to strongly oppose efforts to dislodge Hamas from power.

In an Al Jazeera documentary that aired in late January, he stated his terms, which include Israel withdrawing from Gaza, ending the war, releasing Palestinian prisoners, allowing reconstruction in the enclave and lifting restrictions on the entry and exit of goods.

"The leadership of the occupation, supported by America and the West, will have to submit to our just demands," he said.