A Hamas official said Sunday that the Islamist group had “agreed to release 34 Israeli prisoners, from a list provided by Israel, in the first phase of a prisoner exchange agreement.”
Except that for the moment, Israel claims this Monday that it has not been informed by Hamas of the conditions in which the 34 hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip and held by Hamas are found. “Israel has not yet received confirmation or response from Hamas on the conditions in which the hostages mentioned on the list are found,” said the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The list of hostages that was published in the media was not provided by Israel to Hamas, but initially by Israel to the mediators of the negotiations in July 2024,” the prime minister’s office clarified.
The Hamas official indicated that the list of 34 hostages, since released by certain media, included “all women, the sick, children and the elderly” among the Israeli hostages. “Hamas and the resistance groups need about a week of calm to communicate with the kidnappers and identify the dead or alive hostages,” he added.
Indirect negotiations
Indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel resumed this weekend in Qatar with a view to an agreement on a ceasefire and the release of hostages held captive in Gaza since the attack of the Palestinian movement on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023. Despite intense diplomatic efforts led by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, no truce has been concluded since the week-long intervened at the end of November 2023, which allowed the release of 105 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
During the October 7 attack, which resulted in the death of more than 1,200 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians according to a count based on official data, 251 people were kidnapped. A total of 96 hostages remain in Gaza, 34 of whom were declared dead by the army.
