HAMAS said yesterday that ‘a Gaza ceasefire is possible if the occupation stops setting new conditions’, while Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was reportedly heading to Cairo.
Egypt has also summoned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ‘for an urgent visit’, said the Lebanese Al Mayadeen channel.
It said Abbas is travelling from the Vatican to Cairo, as a breakthrough on a hostage deal with Hamas looks imminent.
Hamas said that negotiations are ‘in a very advanced stage’ and that ‘serious and positive discussions are currently taking place in (the Qatari capital) Doha. A ceasefire is possible if the occupation stops setting new conditions.’
A senior Palestinian official involved in the indirect negotiations said that they are in a ‘decisive and final phase’, and outlined a three-phase plan which would see civilians and women soldiers held captive in Gaza released in the first 45 days, with Israeli forces pulling out of city centres, the coastal road and the strategic strip of land along the border with Egypt.
There would be a mechanism for displaced Gazans to be able to return to the north of the territory, the official said.
A second stage would see remaining captives freed and troops withdrawn before the third stage ending the war.
On 7th December, it was reported that Israel stopped aircraft movement and drone surveillance over Gaza for six hours at the request of mediators, allowing Hamas to collect information about the hostages.
Pro-Qatari newspaper al-Araby al-Jadeed then reported that Hamas had handed a list of sick and elderly Israeli hostages as well as those with US citizenship to Egyptian intelligence officials.
The paper said there were also a list of Palestinian prisoners that the resistance group is demanding as part of the deal.
• The Palestinian Ministry of Education reported yesterday that more than 12,799 students have been killed and at least 20,942 wounded by Israel in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the war.