A senior Hamas official has said the group does not know how many of the Israeli hostages it is holding in Gaza are still alive, as Israeli and Hamas sources set out positions that could undermine the possibility of an imminent ceasefire deal.
The Lebanon-based Hamas official Osama Hamdan said in an interview with CNN that “no one has any idea” how many of the remaining 120 hostages captured on 7 October last year were still alive, amid Israeli estimates that at least a third had died in captivity or were killed when seized.
Reiterating Hamas’s position on the US-supported ceasefire proposal, now backed by a UN security council resolution, he said the group needed “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves”.
He also referred to the need for reconstruction and the end of the years-long Israeli blockade of Gaza. “[Then] we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange,” he said.
Hamdan’s comments are the clearest public signalling of Hamas’s position, which has remained largely unchanged in recent unsuccessful negotiations: that its agreement is preconditioned on Israel agreeing to end the conflict and withdraw its troops from Gaza.
On their part, Israeli officials have said they see Hamas’s response – despite a previous statement that it was “positive” about a proposed ceasefire – as representing a rejection of a proposed deal that would have exchanged hostages for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
While Joe Biden called Hamas the “biggest hang-up” to another truce, there has been little evidence in the days since the security council vote that either the Israeli government or Hamas are interested in compromising on a meaningful ceasefire, with Israeli officials indicating they see any agreement as time-limited and allowing Israel to return to its offensive against Hamas.
Speaking at the G7 summit in Italy, Biden said: “I’ve laid out an approach that has been endorsed by the UN security council, by the G7, by the Israelis, and the biggest hang-up so far is Hamas refusing to sign on even though they have submitted something similar. Whether or not that comes to fruition remains to be seen.”
A report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday, citing an unnamed senior official, said Israel would not send a delegation to continue the ceasefire talks, saying Hamas had introduced “dozens of modifications [to the Biden-backed ceasefire plan] that changed it beyond recognition”.
Any optimism that the UN resolution might prompt more meaningful talks have rapidly evaporated as the Biden administration’s efforts to bring the fighting to an end appear increasingly toothless.
Since the departure of the senior minister Benny Gantz and his more moderate National Unity party (NU) from Israel’s emergency coalition government, Benjamin Netanyahu has become more reliant on far-right parties who have said they will not accept a ceasefire deal.
Since Gantz’s resignation the prime minister has also seen an apparent resurgence in support, according to recent polling.
The polls, for the leftwing Ma’ariv daily and the rightwing Israel Hayom newspaper, showed Netanyahu’s Likud party winning 21 seats if an election were to be held, behind the NU on 24, which is down sharply from the start of the war when NU was polling in the high 30s.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has left at least 37,232 people dead, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry. The war has caused widespread destruction in the territory, with hospitals out of service and the UN warning of famine.
The UN’s main agency for delivering food aid, the World Food Programme, has suspended its use of a costly US-built pier for the delivery of maritime aid into Gaza amid security concerns that Israeli improperly used the security zone around the pier to launch its recent hostage rescue mission that killed about 270 Palestinians in Nuseirat refugee camp.
“You can be damn sure we are going to be very careful about what we assess and what we conclude,” said the UN’s humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths.