Former Israeli mediator Gershon Baskin said he had reached an agreement on the outlines of a possible deal with the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which he claimed he negotiated with at the request of a representative of the families of Israeli prisoners.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Baskin, who participated in the negotiations for the Gilad Shalit deal in 2011, as saying that he had negotiated directly with the Hamas leadership in the past two weeks at the request of a former senior official in the Prisoners’ Families Authority.
He explained that he had reached an agreement with the movement’s leadership on the outlines of a deal that included the release of Israeli prisoners within 3 weeks in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
However, the Prisoners’ Families Authority said in a statement that it had not contacted any party to request negotiations to return the kidnapped on its behalf, adding that it considered the Israeli government and its leaders solely responsible for the return of the kidnapped, according to its statement.
Israeli media reports that 107 prisoners are still being held by Hamas and other resistance factions in the Gaza Strip, but the Israeli security establishment believes that half of them have been killed.
“secret and active channel”
Baskin also said via the X platform that he received the green light from the Israeli authorities to hold talks with Hamas last May, and was able to transmit and receive messages officially and directly, before the authorities asked him two weeks later to stop his efforts.
“I think Netanyahu knew that I was running a direct and secret channel that was very active and he didn’t like it,” Baskin wrote.
Two Israeli officials denied to Haaretz what Baskin said about negotiations with Hamas on behalf of Israel, and one of them said that Hamas does not need to present the demands mentioned by Baskin through a secret channel since it is already doing so through the official channel.
Baskin is an Israeli left-wing activist who was a link between senior Hamas leaders and Israeli envoy David Meidan in the Shalit deal negotiations.
Baskin made efforts for five years to release Shalit, although the Israeli media kept repeating that the Israeli government had not asked him to do so, and the security establishment and the Prime Minister’s Office continued to deal coldly with his efforts, according to Israeli media reports at the time.
But the talks that led to the Shalit deal breakthrough in 2011 went through Baskin, after he received a proposal for a swap deal from then-Deputy Foreign Minister of the Hamas government Ghazi Hamad.