The hostages are said to be scattered across the Gaza Strip. A senior Hamas official warned Thursday that locating hostages held in the Palestinian enclave will require “time and security,” two conditions that a truce in fighting with Israel is likely to facilitate. Since Sunday, a ceasefire proposal has been put on the table by the mediators, but has not yet received the approval of the Palestinian Islamist movement and Israel.
“Part of the negotiations is to reach a ceasefire agreement in order to have sufficient time and security to collect definitive and more precise data on captured Israelis,” Bassem Naïm, a senior security official, said in a statement. members of the Hamas leadership. According to him, the captives “are in different places in the hands of different groups. Some of them are under the rubble, killed along with our own citizens.” He added that the movement was negotiating "heavy equipment" to locate them.
At the beginning of March, Hamas declared that it did not know "who is alive or dead" among the hostages held in the Gaza Strip since the bloody attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement in southern Israel on October 7. More than 250 people have been kidnapped and 129 remain detained in Gaza, including 34 who have died, according to Israeli officials. Bassem Naim stressed that the issue of Israeli hostages was only one of the themes of the ongoing talks.
“Hamas is studying the offer”
The latest proposal put forward by the mediation of Qatar, the United States and Egypt initially provides for a six-week truce as well as the release of 42 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for 800 to 900 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, the entry of 400 to 500 humanitarian aid trucks every day into the Gaza Strip and the return home of residents of the north of the territory displaced by the war, according to a Hamas source.
“Hamas is studying the offer,” a spokesperson for the organization repeated on Wednesday, while a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas on Thursday of “turning its back” on “a very reasonable offer.” ". Another senior movement official, Taher al-Nounou, said Thursday that "what was offered to us during the last round of negotiations regarding the ceasefire does not meet our demands." He noted that Israeli demands for "a temporary ceasefire and the maintenance of their forces in the Gaza Strip" were points of disagreement in the ongoing discussions.
The Hamas attack on October 7 caused the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to a report established by AFP based on official Israeli data. The retaliatory offensive launched by Israel has so far left 33,545 dead in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to the Hamas Health Ministry.