Disagreements over hostage release timing remain despite optimism in Gaza ceasefire talks

Confidence about the future 'greater this time', a senior Hamas official told The National

Palestinians walk across building debris following an Israeli air strike at the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Bloomberg

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Israel said it wants an initial release of at least 30 hostages but Hamas seeks to liberate them one by one and every other day, resisting Israeli demands for a list of names of all captives held in Gaza, sources familiar with ongoing ceasefire negotiations told The National on Saturday.

A proposed truce will see a “limited” release of hostages, including female Israeli soldiers, in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israeli jails, the sources added. Israel, they said, wanted at least 30 of the estimated 100 hostages held by the militants to be initially freed.

Hamas, however, wants to stagger the release of hostages at the rate of one every other day while resisting demands by Israel that it hands over in advance a list of names of all the hostages held in Gaza. It is also demanding that Israeli forces retreat to the margins of the Strip, closer to the Israeli border, during the release of captives.

Israel, for its part, is also insisting that displaced Palestinians in Gaza can only return to the north of the coastal enclave if they agree to a security screening carried out by its military and intelligence agents.

The sources said Hamas has agreed to a temporary ceasefire of up to 40 or 60 days and dropped its demand for a written guarantee from mediators that Israel will continue talks until a permanent ceasefire is reached, making do with verbal assurances.

A senior Hamas official told The National on Friday that “optimism is greater this time compared to before” in the ongoing negotiations in Qatar on a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages held by militants, after the sources said there was significant progress in the latest round.

“We are going into details, including the names of the prisoners and the specific withdrawal areas, and there is more seriousness than before,” the official said.

However, the official said he does not expect “a quick agreement now. The belief is that the Israelis want to present the agreement as a gift to [US president-elect Donald] Trump, two days before his inauguration, or two days after his inauguration, and not to [departing US president Joe] Biden.”

Mr Trump said there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages held by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza are not released by his January 20 inauguration.

Israel has also tentatively agreed in the Qatar talks to a gradual withdrawal from a narrow strip of land that runs the length of Egypt’s border with Gaza on the Palestinian side, which includes Rafah, the only crossing out of the coastal enclave that is not controlled by Israel, the sources added. Israel captured the area in May, a move that has deeply angered Egypt, which has in response closed the crossing.

Bound to Israel by a 1979 peace treaty, Egypt has interpreted the Israeli action as a breach of that accord and subsequent agreements.

The sources, which are familiar with the negotiations, said the main hurdle to reaching a deal to pause the war, which broke out nearly 15 months ago, is that Hamas is convinced that Israel will resume its military operations after the temporary truce and that it has no intention of fully withdrawing from the enclave.

“Reliable information suggest that Israel will permanently retain more than 30 per cent of the enclave and that it has every intention of creating a buffer zone in the north of Gaza where large scale destruction has been methodically carried out by its military to make the area unfit for inhabitation,” said one source.

Hamas said in a statement on Friday that indirect ceasefire negotiations resumed on Friday, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he authorised a delegation from the Mossad intelligence agency, the Shin Bet internal security agency and the military to continue the talks in Qatar.

The US-led talks have repeatedly stalled over the past year. Mr Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with military operations in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed. But the militants, while greatly weakened, have repeatedly regrouped, often in areas vacated by Israeli troops.

A Palestinian man mourns as casualties from an Israeli strike are brought into a hospital, in Deir Al Balah, central Gaza Strip. Reuters

The resumption of the negotiations come as violence continued unabated in Gaza, with more than 100 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on the territory over the past two days.

Israel's military intensified strikes on the Gaza Strip on Friday night and Saturday, killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians, officials said, as ceasefire talks resumed in Doha on Friday. An attack on a house in the Shujaiya area of Gaza city on Saturday killed at least 11 people, official news agency Wafa reported. Others were injured in the attack.

In Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Gaza's civil defence said its teams recovered the bodies of six people killed in an attack on a vehicle on Salah Al Din street in eastern Satar area, while two others were killed in a strike on a tent of displaced people in the city.

A man and a child were killed in strikes on two houses in Al Mawasi. Rescuers recovered the bodies of three people from the rubble of a house targeted by the Israeli army in Al Daraj neighbourhood west of Gaza city.

Three Palestinians were also killed by Israeli fire north of Nuseirat camp in central Gaza on Friday night, according to Wafa.

The Gaza war was sparked by a Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The attackers killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Of the estimated 100 hostages still held in Gaza, at least a third believed to be dead, according to Israel's military.

Israel’s military response to the October 2023 attack has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the territory's Health Ministry, which says women and children make up more than half the dead.

Israel's military says it only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in dense residential areas. The army says it has killed 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war has caused widespread destruction and displaced about 90 per cent of Gaza’s residents, many of them multiple times. Winter has now arrived, and hundreds of thousands are sheltering in tents near the sea that don't shield them from wind or rain.

In the occupied West Bank, one person was killed and nine injured during an Israeli raid in Blata refugee camp east of Nablus on Friday night, the Health Ministry said. Mohamed Medhat Amin Amer, 18, died of his wounds after being shot by Israel forces during the raid, the ministry said. It added nine people were injured, including four in critical condition.