Details of the Hamas reply emerged as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Israel to clinch a deal to pause hostilities, bring home the hostages and deliver desperately needed humanitarian relief to the civilian population in Gaza, which has been under Israeli siege and bombardment for four months.
Israel is likely to take issue with key aspects of the Hamas response.
Under the broad framework of the deal, hashed out by negotiators from the United States, Qatar, Israel and Egypt in Paris last month, an initial pause in fighting would last for six weeks and bring about the release of all civilian hostages held by the militant group in Gaza. Israel would release three Palestinian prisoners for every hostage Hamas frees.
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said Tuesday evening that Hamas had delivered a “positive” reply after a week of deliberation, and Qatar had passed it along to Israel. President Biden did call it “a little bit over the top.”
Between his meetings with top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blinken said U.S. officials were looking at Hamas’s counterproposal “intensely, as is the government of Israel.”
“There’s a lot of work to be done but we are very much focused on doing that work, and hopefully being able to resume the release of hostages that was interrupted,” he said.
But Israel and Hamas remain far apart on key aspects of the framework, including which Palestinian prisoners would be eligible for release and whether Israeli troops would withdraw from parts of the Gaza Strip during the pause.
Hamas has previously said it wants any hostage deal to result in a permanent cease-fire, while Netanyahu has vowed to fight on until “total victory” in Gaza. The militant group’s counterproposal is less definitive about an immediate, permanent cease-fire — one of the reasons some officials familiar with the negotiations are touting progress in the talks.
The text of the Hamas response was published by the Hezbollah-aligned al-Akhbar newspaper Wednesday and verified to The Post by several Hamas officials. It envisions three phases, each lasting 45 days, involving the release of Israeli hostages and the remains of those who were killed.
In the first phase, both sides would pause fighting, and Hamas and other Gaza militant groups would free Israeli nonmilitary hostages, including women, children, and the elderly and sick. In exchange, Hamas has demanded the release of all Palestinian women, children, men over 50 and sick inmates held in Israeli prisons, in addition to 1,500 male Palestinian prisoners, 500 of whom Hamas would choose from among those serving life or long-term sentences.
During this stage, Israeli troops should withdraw from populated areas; at least 500 trucks of humanitarian aid should enter Gaza each day; displaced Gazans should be able to return to their homes and move around the Strip freely; Israel should allow more wounded Palestinians to seek medical treatment abroad; and hospitals should be repaired and shelters built, according to the Hamas counteroffer.
The second phase would see militants release all male Israeli hostages in exchange for additional Palestinian prisoner releases and the complete withdrawal of Israel forces from Gaza. The Hamas reply says talks to pave the way to “the return of a state of complete calm” must occur before this stage.
During the final 45-day phase, Hamas would return the remains of Israelis in exchange for the bodies of Palestinians held by Israel.
About 100 hostages are believed to still be alive, and Israeli officials say that Hamas is holding at least 31 dead bodies. The “vast majority” of the dead were killed during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel, according to a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. During a previous pause in the fighting in November, 105 hostages — 81 Israelis and 24 foreign nationals — were released in exchange for more than 200 Palestinian prisoners.
The Israeli government has been under intense pressure from many families of hostages to bring their loved ones home. “If we don’t get them out of there immediately, they may not survive another day,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the group behind months of protests, said in a statement Wednesday.
But other families have backed calls by far-right officials to continue fighting until Hamas is eradicated from the Gaza Strip. Zvika Mor, father of Eitan Mor, who was abducted from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, urged Israel to press on with its war. “You cannot do peace now,” he said at a briefing Wednesday.
Miki Zohar, a minister from Netanyahu’s Likud party, told The Post this week that Netanyahu would not have the majority to gain approval for a deal that requires the “release of thousands of terrorists with blood on their hands, in exchange for part of the hostages, and a long-term stop in fighting.”
Israel would require more “acceptable terms: one month or 1½ months of a stop in fighting, because we have no intention of stopping the fighting, and a more reasonable number of terrorists — a few hundred, for example,” he said.
Israel has indicated it has no intention of winding down its military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 27,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said repeatedly in recent days that Israel will expand its ground offensive into Rafah, the only part of Gaza that Israeli troops have not yet reached.
More than a million Palestinians are crammed into the tiny strip of land along the border with Egypt. Many are living in unsanitary conditions in tents or makeshift structures, struggling to find food or receive medical treatment. Israel has intensified its bombing of Rafah this week, with five attacks killing 12 people in the area on Tuesday alone.
Top U.N. officials, as well as many governments around the world, have called for a cease-fire, warning that a catastrophic humanitarian situation is worsening by the day. Aid workers have said that casualty numbers would be “huge” if Israel advances south on Rafah.
Israeli authorities dropped leaflets over Rafah on Monday warning they planned to bomb the area, without giving instructions on where civilians should evacuate.
“Dropping leaflets like this on Rafah, in light of talk about a military operation, raises our fears in an incredible way,” Ahmed Ismail Musa, 27, told The Post. Musa’s family was already displaced earlier in the war.
“We live in the most crowded area,” he said. “Our options will be nonexistent.”
Blinken’s trip to Israel caps his fifth visit to the Middle East since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack killed about 1,200 Israelis, sparking Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza. On Monday and Tuesday, Blinken met with top officials in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar to discuss efforts to reach a cease-fire deal.
Blinken is expected to meet later on Wednesday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
The Biden administration is under significant domestic and international pressure to push Israel to end the war or do more to avoid civilian casualties and increase the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave. Washington also aims to keep a lid on attacks by Iranian proxies across the region in response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
The United States hopes that the initial pause would pave the way to a more permanent resolution to the conflict. Washington is pushing for that settlement to include a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a foreign policy priority of the Biden administration before the Oct. 7 attacks roiled the region.
But Riyadh on Wednesday made clear it would only begin diplomatic relations with Israel if “all Israeli occupation forces withdraw from the Gaza Strip” and a viable Palestinian state is established.
“The Kingdom has communicated its firm position to the U.S. administration that there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognized on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital,” a statement from the Saudi Foreign Ministry said.
Hazem Balousha in Amman, Jordan, Sarah Dadouch in Beirut, Shira Rubin and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv, Heba Mahfouz in Cairo and Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.
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