Hamas Says Any 'Truce Deal' Must Be on Terms of Palestinian Resistance

Tuesday, 21 November 2023 8:50 AM 

Injured Palestinians evacuated from the Indonesian hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip receive care at Nasser hospital in the Palestinian territory's southern city of Khan Yunis, on November 20, 2023. (Photo by AF)

The head of Hamas’ political bureau says the Palestinian resistance movement "is nearing" a truce agreement with Israel, and that any ceasefire deal must be on the terms of Palestinian resistance.

“We are close to reaching a deal on a truce,” Ismail Haniyeh said in a statement on Tuesday.

Hamas, he added, had delivered its response to Qatari officials, who are brokering the indirect negotiations between the Gaza-based group and the Israeli regime.

Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq also told Al Jazeera TV that the details of the deal will be released by Qatar and Egypt “in the coming hours.”

The truce would last for multiple days and see the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza as part of a prisoner swap deal, he said.

Rishq emphasized that any agreement is necessarily based on the conditions of the Palestinian resistance.

He further said Israel, especially the regime’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had been obstructing the ceasefire talks.

Tel Aviv was looking for negotiations under the continued aggression to break the will of the resistance, something which will never happen, according to the Hamas official.

He also said that the truce deal was agreed upon by all the resistance brigades in Gaza through phone calls and they always stand “united whether it is on the battlefield or in making political decisions.”

Two sources familiar with the truce talks told AFP that a tentative deal includes a five-day ceasefire on the ground and limits to Israeli aerial assaults over southern Gaza in return for the release of between 50 and 100 Israelis held captive by Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance group.

Under the agreement, some 300 Palestinians are also expected to be freed from Israeli jails, among them women and children.

Israel waged the bloody war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Storm in the occupied territories.

Since the start of the aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has killed 13,300 Palestinians, including 5,600 children and 3,550 women, and injured more than 31,000 others.

It has also imposed a “complete siege” on the coastal sliver, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.