Israeli media said that Tel Aviv is determined to make efforts for the success of negotiations to release prisoners detained in the Gaza Strip, while the Palestinian factions stressed the priority of a comprehensive cessation of the war before talking about exchange deals with Israel.
Israeli Channel 12 reported from private sources that the Israeli government is determined to make every effort to ensure the success of negotiations to release prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance, knowing that it will be difficult.
The Israeli Channel 13 said that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had presented a deal that included the release of 30 to 40 Israeli detainees held by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in exchange for the release of prominent prisoners, and a partial withdrawal from some areas, with a truce for a period of two weeks to a month.
The officials indicated that if the deal is completed during the transition to the next phase, Israel may change some of the military arrangements inside Gaza.
Israeli media said on Wednesday that Tel Aviv had expressed willingness for the upcoming exchange deal to include prominent detainees, without mentioning any names. Axios also quoted Israeli officials as saying that they had submitted an offer regarding a new exchange deal, and they expected a response from the Qatari mediators within a few days.
The White House confirmed that the talks on a new truce in Gaza are very serious, and stressed that Washington is pressing for the release of Israeli detainees.
For its part, Hamas announced on Thursday, via its Telegram account, that the Palestinian factions had taken a national decision that there would be no talk about prisoners or exchange deals with Israel until after a comprehensive cessation of the war on the Gaza Strip.
According to Israeli statistics, Hamas captured about 240 people during its attack on southern Israel on October 7, and exchanged dozens of them during a humanitarian truce that lasted for 7 days until December 1, with Israel, which holds 7,800 Palestinians in its prisons, including Children and women.
Since last October 7, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, which as of Wednesday has left 20,000 Palestinian martyrs and 52,600 wounded, most of them children and women. It has also left massive infrastructure destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, according to the Strip authorities. And the United Nations.
As part of the efforts to calm the situation, Agence France-Presse quoted a source close to Hamas that the head of the Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, continues in Cairo to discuss a “temporary truce,” and a source in the Islamic Jihad movement stated that its Secretary-General Ziad al-Nakhalah will also head to Cairo early next week.
