MONDAY March 24, 2025 |
By thenewsdesk.ng
A new Egyptian proposal aimed at restoring the Gaza ceasefire deal won tentative support from the Hamas terror group, sources told Reuters on Monday, though Israel said it had yet to receive the terms of the offer.
According to The Times of Israel, under Cairo’s plan, Hamas would release five living hostages, including American-Israeli Edan Alexander, in return for Israel allowing humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip and implementing a weeks-long pause in the fighting, an Egyptian official said.
After the first week, Israel would implement the second phase of the collapsed ceasefire agreement.
Israel would also release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Egypt presented the proposal last week, security sources said Monday, with a Hamas official saying that the terror group has “responded positively” to the idea.
The sources said that the plan also provides a timeline for the release of all 59 hostages in exchange for a timeline for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, backed by US guarantees.
The security sources added that the US also agreed to Egypt’s plan, but an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Monday, “We haven’t heard of any new proposal.”
According to the Israeli official, Israel is still trying to get Hamas to agree to a US-backed proposal spearheaded by Trump’s special envoy to the Mideast, Steve Witkoff, which would not entail full Israeli withdrawal from the Strip.
The narrower “Witkoff proposal” rejected by Hamas thus far, would have seen the ceasefire extended through April 19 and have the terror group release five living hostages in exchange for a large number of Palestinian security prisoners.
Israel said it accepted Witkoff’s proposal, but said it was seeking the release of 11 living hostages.
If Hamas does not agree to Israel’s terms, “we will keep increasing the pressure until Hamas breaks,” the official said, threatening “a widespread ground campaign” in Gaza.
In mid-January, Israel and Hamas agreed to a hostage-ceasefire and prisoner-release deal that officially lasted 42 days and saw the terror group release 30 living hostages and the bodies of eight slain captives, while Israel released almost 2,000 terrorists and other prisoners, before the expiration of the deal’s first phase.
The deal had originally envisioned a second phase that would see a permanent end to the war in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages and many more Palestinian security prisoners.
Netanyahu ordered the resumption of fighting in Gaza last week, saying talks moving forward would be held under fire after Hamas rejected proposals to extend phase one of the ceasefire.
Hamas has insisted on sticking to the original terms of the deal, which was supposed to begin its second phase at the beginning of March.
For a month, though, Israel refused to enter talks on the specific terms of phase two, as the stage’s general framework requires it to fully withdraw from Gaza and agree to a permanent end of the war.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip still hold 59 hostages, including 58 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023.
They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March.
The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.
In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.
The body of another soldier killed in 2014, Lt. Hadar Goldin, is still being held by Hamas and is counted among the 59 hostages.
