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HAMAS HAS SAID that “optimism” was prevailing in indirect talks with Israel aimed at ending the war on Gaza, with the militant group submitting a list of people it wants released in exchange for freeing Israeli hostages.
The talks aim to thrash out a plan to implement a 20-point proposal put forward last month by US President Donald Trump, to which both Israel and Hamas have responded positively.
The plan calls for a ceasefire, the release of all the hostages, Hamas’s disarmament and a gradual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
It eventually envisions Trump and former UK prime minister Tony Blair leading a governing body before rule of the Gaza Strip is handed over to a Palestinian government.
“The mediators are making great efforts to remove any obstacles to the implementation of the ceasefire, and a spirit of optimism prevails among all parties,” senior Hamas official Taher al-Nunu told AFP from Sharm El-Sheikh.
The Palestinian group submitted a list of people it wants to be released in the first phase of the truce “in accordance with the agreed-upon criteria and numbers”, Nunu added.
In exchange, Hamas is set to release 47 hostages, both alive and dead, who were seized in its October 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the latest Israeli war in the territory.
So far, the vast majority of hostages held by Hamas have been released during negotiated ceasefires, the last of which was broken by Israel in March.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been under relentless pressure from the families of the hostages and their supporters, who have urged him to make a deal to secure the release of their loved ones.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner were now in Sharm El-Sheikh, and that the word he had received since their arrival was “very encouraging”.
He said the US envoys, both of whose backgrounds are in real-estate, came “with a strong will, a strong message, and a strong mandate from President Trump to end the war in this round of negotiations”.
Sisi also invited Trump himself to travel to Egypt for a signing ceremony if a deal were reached.
In the Oval Office yesterday, Trump told reporters “there’s a possibility that we could have peace in the Middle East” if Hamas and Israel did agree on a ceasefire.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin are also expected at the talks today.
In Gaza, the Israeli army has surrounded the capital city and said it has heeded a demand to halt its bombardment, although photographs taken today show it has continued.
Key to the negotiations will be the names of the Palestinians whose release Hamas will push for.
As of March 2025 Israel was holding captive 1,486 sentenced prisoners, 2,960 remand detainees and 3,405 administrative detainees held without trial. There were also 1555 people held as “unlawful combatants”, according to the Israeli human rights NGO Hamoked.
Legally speaking, many of those held in Israeli detention are considered hostages, especially those arbitrarily detained since October 2023, some of whom have already been used as bargaining chips in previous exchanges of captives.
According to Egyptian state-linked media, high-profile inmate Marwan Barghouti – from Hamas’s rival, the Fatah movement – is among those the group wants to see released.
He has been imprisoned since 2002, and was sentenced to life in 2004 on murder charges.
Regarded as a terrorist by Israel, he often tops opinion polls of popular Palestinian leaders and is sometimes described by his supporters as the “Palestinian Mandela”.
More broadly, Hamas’s top negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, said the Islamist group wants “guarantees from President Trump and the sponsor countries that the war will end once and for all”.
A Palestinian source close to the Hamas negotiating team said yesterday’s session included Hamas discussing “the initial maps presented by the Israeli side regarding the withdrawal of troops”, as well as the mechanism and timetable for the exchange of captives.
The negotiations are taking place under the shadow of the second anniversary of the 2023 Hamas-led attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of whom were civilians.
Militants also took 251 people hostage into Gaza, where 47 remain, including 25 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s military siege, bombardment and assault on Gaza has killed at least 67,183 people, according to the Gaza health ministry.
The campaign has been called a genocide by multiple human rights groups and a recent UN inquiry team.
With reporting from AFP
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