A senior official of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement says Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been putting forward “impossible conditions” for reaching a ceasefire deal in the besieged Gaza Strip.
In a statement, Mahmoud Mardawi said that Netanyahu was proposing “impossible conditions” aimed at thwarting the possibility of reaching a ceasefire and captive-prisoner swap. Netanyahu refused to commit to components of the agreement he had already approved in the past, Mardawi added.
The Israeli prime minister insists on releasing only 10 captives instead of freeing all in one phase, the official emphasized. “Netanyahu is lying when he claims he is not involved in choosing the names of the captives [to be released in the deal],” Mardawi wrote. “He does not want a deal.”
Hamas has time and again required that Israel stop its aggression against Gaza and that the Israeli military withdraw from areas it seized in Gaza after breaking the last ceasefire in March.
The latest developments come after U.S. President Donald Trump recently reiterated calls for a Gaza ceasefire after saying a deal could be reached within a week. Trump said that he believes a ceasefire is possible, despite intense bombardment by the Israeli military and continued deadly Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians.
“I think it’s close. I just spoke to some of the people involved,” Trump was quoted as saying.
“We think within the next week we’re going to get a ceasefire,” the president said, without revealing who he had been in contact with.
Trump’s claim has been met with skepticism as deaths spiral in Gaza and Israeli forces are committing more war crimes for shooting starving people seeking food aid. No negotiations are happening anywhere in the region.
Analysts, however, maintain that talk of a truce increased exponentially after the U.S. and Israel suffered a defeat by the Iranian armed forces following the 12-day Israeli-imposed war on Iran. The embattled Israeli regime was forced to unilaterally declare a truce on June 24 after suffering heavy blows resulting from a total of 22 waves of Iranian missile strikes.
Meanwhile, the Israeli war machine continues its genocidal campaign in Gaza, killing nearly 90 Palestinians in just 24 hours.
According to the UN, over 550 Palestinians have been killed while trying to access food under the current US-Israeli aid distribution mechanism in Gaza.
The death toll from Israel’s aggression on the strip has now reached 56,500 since October 2023.
