(Jerusalem) Israel said on Monday that it had not been informed by Hamas of the conditions in which the 34 hostages held captive in Gaza find themselves, whom the Palestinian movement said the day before was ready to release as part of a possible agreement .
Posted at 6:36 a.m.
Sébastien DUVAL
Agence France-Presse
Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas resumed this weekend in Qatar, with a view to an agreement on a ceasefire and the release of hostages, while the two parties in conflict accused each other of fail the negotiations.
A Hamas official told AFP on 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.”
“The list of hostages that was published in the media was not provided by Israel to Hamas, but initially by Israel to the mediators [des négociations] in July 2024,” the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded on Monday.
“Israel has not yet received confirmation or response from Hamas on the conditions of the hostages mentioned on the list,” he added.
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 resistance groups need about a week of calm to communicate with the kidnappers and identify the [otages] dead or alive,” he added.
“No more time to waste”
Despite intense diplomatic efforts led under the aegis of Qatar, Egypt and the United States, no truce has been concluded since that of a week at the end of November 2023, which allowed the release of 105 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The new round of negotiations in Doha comes about two weeks before the inauguration, on January 20, of US President-elect Donald Trump, who has already put pressure on Hamas.
The current head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, said Monday that he was “confident” that an agreement could be found, even if “the finish line” might not be crossed “in the next two weeks”.
According to Israeli media, the head of Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency, David Barnea, was to join negotiators sent by his country in Doha on Monday.
Among the main sticking points so far have been the permanent nature or not of a ceasefire and the governance of Gaza after the war, Israel categorically opposing Hamas being able to rule the territory again.
The Families Forum, the main association of relatives of Israeli hostages, called for an agreement to be reached as quickly as possible for their release: “There is no more time to lose.”
Violence in the West Bank
While awaiting a possible agreement, violence continues in the Gaza Strip, where two children were killed by an Israeli drone strike in the south of the territory, local emergency services said.
The Israeli army announced for its part that three “projectiles” had been fired towards Israel from northern Gaza, without causing any injuries.
Israeli emergency services also reported three dead and eight injured, including one seriously, in shootings on a bus and vehicles near a village in the occupied West Bank, where violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has exploded. since the start of the war in Gaza.
The latter was triggered by a Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the death of 1,208 people, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
That day, 251 people were kidnapped. Among them, 96 remain hostages in Gaza, 34 of whom were declared dead by the army.
More than 45,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Israeli military campaign of retaliation in Gaza, according to data from the Hamas government’s Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.