GAZA CITY, Feb 20 — The Palestinian group Hamas has said it would only accept a prisoner swap deal with Israel if it agrees to a full cease-fire and the entry of relief aid into the Gaza Strip.
“The return of (Israeli) occupation prisoners has three prices. The first is the relief of our people and their return to a normal life.
“The second is ending the aggression, and the third is a real prisoner swap deal that frees our 10,000 prisoners in Israeli jails,” Anadolu Agency reported Khalil al-Hayya, a member of the group’s political bureau, said in an interview with Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV yesterday.
He said Israel refuses to withdraw from Gaza and rejects allowing displaced Palestinians to return to their homes.
On Saturday (February 17), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Hamas’s proposal on the cease-fire and prisoner swap as “delusional.”
“Netanyahu retreated last week what he had agreed to in the Paris paper,” said al-Hayya.
According to Anadolu, citing a Palestinian source, on February 7, Hamas proposed a three-stage plan for a Gaza cease-fire that includes a 135-day pause in the fighting in return for the release of hostages.
The original framework agreement was worked out during a Paris meeting last month of top US, Israel, Qatar, and Egypt officials.
Israel believes there are 134 Israelis being held in Gaza after the Israeli army managed last week to free two Israelis held in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
It has waged a deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 29,092 and injuring about 69,028m since October 7, with mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85 per cent of the territory’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60 per cent of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
— Bernama
