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President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff on Saturday said Hamas's response to a US-backed ceasefire plan for Gaza was “totally unacceptable.”
Hamas had given a conditional agreement to the Gaza truce plan presented by Mr Witkoff, with the group's reservations focused on assurances it seeks on Israel's withdrawal from the Palestinian territory and the distribution of aid, sources told The National on Saturday.
But Mr Witkoff appeared to pour cold water on any sense that an agreement with Hamas was imminent.
He said the militant group's response “only takes us backwards” and called on them to accept the proposal that the US had presented.
“That is the only way we can close a 60-day ceasefire deal in the coming days,” he wrote on X, adding that such a deal would lead to good-faith negotiations to try to reach a permanent ceasefire.
Hamas's response to the US plan had been handed earlier to Qatar and Egypt, whose mediators in turn fine-tuned it in co-operation with Hamas's leaders.
Hamas's response, reached after consultations with its allies in Gaza, sought firm assurances that negotiations with Israel during the proposed 60-day truce will bring about an Israeli withdrawal and an end to the war, according to sources.
Israel has long maintained it would not end the war until all hostages are released and Hamas's governing and military capabilities are dismantled.
It also seems improbable that Israel would at this point agree to a full withdrawal from Gaza under any immediate scenario.
Hamas is also seeking clarifications on the quantity, nature and distribution of the humanitarian aid that will enter Gaza if a deal is reached. It also wants to stagger the release of 10 living hostages mentioned by the plan over the course of the 60-day truce, not in batches as before.
“Hamas believes that releasing the 10 hostages one-by-one or two-by-two throughout the truce will help ensure Israel's continuous commitment to the deal,” said one of the sources.
Hamas is believed to be holding about 58 hostages, of whom about 20 are alive, according to the military in Israel, which has already accepted the plan, which also requires Hamas to hand over the remains of 18 hostages.
In a vaguely-phrased statement, Hamas had said on Saturday its response to the plan included a demand for an end to the war.
“This proposal aims to achieve a permanent ceasefire, a comprehensive withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and ensure the flow of aid to our people and our families in the Gaza Strip.”
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Hamas must agree to the ceasefire proposal or be destroyed.
“The Hamas murderers will now be forced to choose: accept the terms of the 'Witkoff Deal' for the release of the hostages – or be annihilated,” he said.
The latest proposal to pause the war in Gaza comes after repeated attempts by mediators failed to achieve a breakthrough, with Israel resuming military operations on March 18 after the end of a two-month truce brokered by mediators from the US, Egypt and Qatar.
Sources told The National on Friday that Hamas was dissatisfied with the plan's lack of “genuine guarantees” that the proposed negotiations with Israel would lead to an end to the war and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
They said Hamas believed the plan left the prospect of an Israeli withdrawal and a long-term truce dependent on the progress of the negotiations, rather than the fruition of the process, the sources said.
Hamas also believes the plan ignores its suggestions on the timeline and dynamics of the handover of hostages and fails to treat the delivery of aid into Gaza as a human right, leaving the process closely linked to the proposed plan and, subsequently, subject to Israel's use of food as a weapon.
Under the plan, the resumption of humanitarian aid would involve 1,000 lorries a day to quickly address the widespread hunger and acute shortages of medicine and other essentials among Gaza's 2.3 million population, the sources said.
A distribution plan drafted by UN experts for its personnel and members of affiliated agencies has been handed to Israeli authorities, the sources said.
Besides a long-term ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the proposed negotiations during the truce will, according to the plan, tackle sensitive issues, including the governing of postwar Gaza, the fate of Hamas's weapons and the exile of its senior officials, the sources said.
Hamas has already suggested it would keep away from governing Gaza and any reconstruction effort and said it is open to laying down and storing its weapons under international supervision, but not surrendering them.
It has also indicated that it will agree to some of its senior officials, as well as some from allied groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, leaving Gaza to live in exile – provided they are not attacked later by Israel.
The Gaza war was caused by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people. Hamas fighters also took about 250 hostage.
Israel responded with a relentless military campaign that has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians and injured more than twice that number, Gaza's Health Ministry said. The war also laid to waste most of the enclave's built-up areas.
