The hope of reaching a truce is fading.
Hamas will make "no compromise" on its demands for a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and a withdrawal of Israeli troops in exchange for any agreement on the release of the hostages, the spokesperson said on Friday. word of its armed wing.
“Our number one priority before any agreement on an exchange of prisoners is the complete guarantee of a cessation of the aggression (…) and a withdrawal of the enemy” from the Gaza Strip, “and there is no will not compromise on this,” said Abou Obeida, spokesperson for the al-Qassam brigades in a televised address.
Hamas is also demanding the return to their homes of hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by the war and the start of reconstruction of the territory.
Israel, for its part, demands that Hamas provide a precise list of hostages still alive in Gaza, but the Islamist movement says it does not know who is “alive or dead” among them.
Call to “flow in” during Ramadan
Abou Obeida also called on Palestinians to “mobilize” and “flow” during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, where tensions are feared during this period, after five months of war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt are trying to reach an agreement on a pause in fighting before Ramadan, which begins early next week, but the negotiations, held this week in Cairo, have been unsuccessful .
Also read: Negotiations for a truce in Gaza: “Hamas ups the ante on the hostage issue”
US President Joe Biden warned this week of a “very dangerous” situation in Israel and particularly in Jerusalem if hostilities continued during Ramadan.
The war in Gaza was sparked on October 7 by an attack of unprecedented scale carried out by Hamas commandos infiltrated from the Gaza Strip in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of at least 1,160 people. , most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
In retaliation for the Hamas attack, Israel launched a military operation that has so far left 30,800 dead in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas health ministry.
Around 250 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza on October 7.
According to Israeli authorities, 130 are still being held, 31 of whom are believed to have died, after the release of more than a hundred hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners during a truce in November.