Ismail Haniyeh, the most senior political leader of Hamas, has said a truce agreement with Israel may be close, raising hopes of both a pause in the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the release of at least some of the Israeli hostages the militant organisation is holding there.
“We are close to reaching a deal on a truce,” Haniyeh said, and the group had delivered its response to Qatari mediators.
Qatar foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari was on Tuesday quoted by the Times of Israel as saying “We are at the closest point we ever had been in reaching an agreement”. The deal would involve a multi-day pause in hostilities, the release of about 50 civilian hostages by Hamas and the release of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli custody, according to a source who briefed Reuters.
Senior US and Israeli officials, as well as the Qatari prime minister, have all suggested in recent days that an agreement is near, although observers have cautioned that public statements during such negotiations are often misleading and any potential deal could easily collapse.
Analysts also point out that any deal agreed by the political leadership of Hamas overseas would have to be acceptable to political and military leaders in Gaza.
Izzat el Reshiq, another senior Hamas political leader, told Al Jazeera that continuing talks were for a truce that would last “a number of days” and include arrangements for the entry of aid in to Gaza, and a swap of hostages taken by Hamas for prisoners in Israeli jails. Reshiq, who like Haniyeh is based in Qatar, said the deal would include the release of Israeli women and children from Gaza in exchange for Palestinian women and children from “occupation prisons”.
Negotiators have been working to secure a deal to allow the release of about 240 mostly Israeli hostages who were seized on 7 October when Hamas launched attacks into Israel which killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in their homes or at a dance party. Qatar, where Hamas has a political office, has been mediating.
On Monday, the US president, Joe Biden, said he believed a deal to free the hostages was close. “I believe so,” Biden said when asked whether a hostage deal was near, and crossed his fingers.
The White House said the negotiations were in the “endgame” stage, but refused to give further details, saying it could jeopardise a successful outcome.
“Sensitive negotiations like this can fall apart at the last minute,” the White House deputy national security adviser, Jon Finer, told NBC’s Meet the Press programme on Sunday. “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”
Two sources familiar with the latest talks told Agence France-Presse that a tentative deal included a five-day truce, comprising a ceasefire on the ground and limits to Israeli air operations over southern Gaza.
In return, between 50 and 100 prisoners held by Hamas and Islamic Jihad – a separate Palestinian militant group – would be released. They would include Israeli civilians and captives of other nationalities, but no military personnel.
Under the proposed deal, 300 Palestinians would be released from Israeli jails, among them women and children, the sources said. This would be a significant propaganda coup for Hamas, and a personal victory for Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, who spent 22 years in Israeli prisons before being released in an exchange in 2011.
Sinwar tops Israel’s hitlist and his whereabouts are unknown, but his consent is essential for any agreement to be meaningful.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is under domestic pressure to free the hostages. The challenge of doing this while completing the goal of eliminating Hamas as a military force capable of striking Israel again has led to disagreements among Israeli policymakers and the security establishment as well as society more broadly.
In recent days, support among senior military officers for a deal appears to have grown, with a new understanding that the release of the hostages should be the main objective of the Israeli offensive. Many within the Israeli security establishment have always believed that significant concessions were inevitable.
“We know we will have to pay a painful price,” one senior Israeli intelligence official told the Guardian last month.
Israeli media have reported divisions among senior ministers, with some favouring accepting the deal reportedly tabled by Qatar before international pressure or rising military casualties weaken Israel’s bargaining position. Israel has reported the loss of 66 soldiers in the offensive so far.
Others argue that Israel should hold out for better terms and that to accept those on offer would set a precedent for future negotiations to obtain the freedom of any remaining hostages.
On Monday, relatives of the hostages clashed with far-right members of Netanyahu’s government. So far, four of those held have been released, two have been found dead and one rescued.
Not all of the hostages are held by Hamas, with some in the hands of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a separate extremist faction, and criminals in Gaza, Israeli and other officials say.
Separately, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Monday that its president had travelled to Qatar to meet Haniyeh “to advance humanitarian issues related to the armed conflict in Israel and Gaza”.
According to the Hamas government in Gaza, the Israeli offensive has killed more than 13,300 people, thousands of them children.
A further 17 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli bombardment of Nuseirat camp in central Gaza at midnight, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported early on Tuesday. There was no immediate comment from Israel.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry also said on Monday that at least 12 Palestinians had been killed and dozens wounded after a shell struck the second floor of the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, which is surrounded by Israeli tanks.
Medics there fear the hospital, the only one which up until Monday was still able to treat patients in the north of the territory, could suffer the same fate as al-Shifa hospital, which was surrounded and raided by Israeli forces last week.
A medical worker, Marwan Abdallah, said the tanks were clearly visible from the hospital windows about 200 metres away and that Israeli snipers could be seen on nearby rooftops. “Women and children are terrified. There are constant sounds of explosions and gunfire,” he said.
Israel denied it had hit the hospital, while staff deny there were any armed militants on the premises.
