Hamas seized about 250 hostages within the October 7 assault.
Jerusalem:
Hamas’s armed wing stated Friday there could be no compromise on the motion’s demand that Israel withdraw from Gaza to safe the discharge of hostages seized within the October 7 assault.
“Our high precedence to achieve a prisoner change deal is the whole dedication for the halt of aggression and an enemy withdrawal, and there’s no compromise on this,” Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, stated in a televised assertion.
Hamas additionally desires “reduction for our individuals, the return of the displaced and reconstruction,” Abu Obeida stated, amid warnings of looming famine within the war-ravaged territory.
The assertion got here as hopes dimmed for a brand new truce within the five-month-old battle between Israel and Hamas triggered by the Palestinian militants’ unprecedented assault on southern Israel on October 7.
Mediators had been scrambling to lock in a truce earlier than the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is about to start as early as Sunday relying on the lunar calendar.
On Thursday, Hamas’s delegation voiced dissatisfaction with Israeli responses to its calls for and left the newest spherical of talks in Cairo for consultations with the motion’s management in Qatar.
Hamas has been demanding that Israel withdraw from Gaza, which Israel has refused to do.
Hamas seized about 250 hostages within the October 7 assault, a few of whom had been launched throughout a week-long truce in November.
Israel believes 99 hostages stay alive in Gaza and that 31 have died.
Any new truce deal was anticipated to contain the change of some hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Israel’s retaliatory navy marketing campaign to destroy Hamas has killed at the very least 30,878 individuals in Gaza, in line with the Hamas-run territory’s well being ministry.
Abu Obeida on Friday additionally known as for “our individuals” to mobilise and “crawl” in the direction of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, a flashpoint for violence throughout Ramadan in previous years.
US President Joe Biden warned this week that, with out a truce earlier than Ramadan, “Israel and Jerusalem could possibly be very, very harmful.”
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