9 hours agoHamas: No peace talks in Gaza unless Israel releases prisoners
Periskopi(a year ago)
(a year ago)Hamas has declared talks with Israel about further steps in the Gaza ceasefire agreement conditioned to release Palestinian prisoners as agreed. Israel said Sunday it was delaying the release of more than 600 Palestinians in exchange for six living hostages and four dead hostages being [...]
Hamas has declared talks with Israel about further steps in the Gaza ceasefire agreement conditioned to release Palestinian prisoners as agreed.
Israel said on Sunday it was delaying the release of more than 600 Palestinians in exchange for six living hostages and four dead hostages who had been released, accusing Hamas of repeated violations, including the falling “ceremonies of”.
A senior Hamas official said the decision exposed the entire agreement in “to great risk” and called on mediators, particularly the US, to pressure Israel.
The first phase of the agreement and the six-week interim ceasefire will be completed on Saturday, but indirect negotiations for the second phase and the end of the war have not yet begun.
UN Secretary General Antónnio Guterres warned that the ceasefire was the uncertain “” and that the resumption of hostilities should be avoided at any cost.
He also called for the dignified “release of all remaining hostages”.
Israel was scheduled to release 620 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 10 hostages. More than 400 were Gazans arrested by Israeli forces during the war, while 50 of the prisoners were serving a life sentence in Israeli prisons.
They reportedly had already boarded buses on a prison in the West Coast when the order came to suspend their release while Netanyah consulted the ministers.
In the early hours Sunday, the prime minister's office said the release would be extended “to the light of Hamas' repeated violations, including ceremonies that humiliate our hostages and the cynical exploitation of our hostages for propagandistic purposes”.
The “is set to postpone the release of terrorists who were planned yesterday until the release of the next hostages and no humiliating ceremony is secured.
