Hamas: Indirect talks with Israel to resume this month

Senior Hamas members said on Thursday that indirect ceasefire talks with Israel in Cairo are set to resume at the end of this month.

Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk said discussions on a prisoner deal were not on the agenda for the moment.

“The time will come for that,” he said, according to Israel Radio. A Gaza-based official said talks on the exchange of Palestinian prisoners for the remains of two IDF soldiers killed during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza this summer would take place separately from discussions on the rehabilitation of the Palestinian enclave post-war.

According to a report on Ynet, the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan has urged Hamas to include the names of Jordanian prisoners held in Israeli jails, when it makes its demands. According to the report based on Jordanian officials, there are 20-25 such prisoners in Israel.

Last week, Mohammed Nazzal, a senior figure in Hamas’s political wing, stated that Israel and the Islamist group were poised to kick-start negotiations over the return of the remains of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul.

Nazzal said talks on the retrieval of the bodies would probably begin later this month in Cairo. In an interview with a Hamas-affiliated website, he stressed that his group would demand that Israel “pay a price” for every bit of information regarding the whereabouts of the soldiers’ remains.

The return of Goldin and Shaul’s remains is expected to be near the top of Israel’s list of demands in the indirect ceasefire negotiations with Hamas in Cairo. It is unclear what the contours of such a deal will be, but it’s likely Hamas sees it as an opportunity to free prisoners held by Israel.

On Tuesday, a Hamas member of parliament said that a Palestinian prisoner release deal was in the works and that members of the group who were arrested before the start of Operation Protective Edge are to be set free.

Mohammed Attoun said that the deal will be completed soon but would not give any specific details, the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported.

“We hereby confirm there will be good omens very soon and the occupation will yield, whether they like it or not, just as they did before,” Attoun told reporters. “I can confirm that there will be a deal soon to free our prisoners.”

Attoun stressed that Hamas members who had previously been released in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal but were then arrested following the kidnapping and slaying of three Israeli teenagers in June must be given their freedom before any other deals can be made.

Naftali Fraenkel, 16, Gil-ad Shaar, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, were abducted and killed on June 12 by a Hamas-affiliated cell in the Hebron area. The three students were nabbed while waiting at a West Bank bus stop and hitchhiking post near Hebron.

Their abduction set off a search operation in the West Bank as well as a crackdown on the Hamas organization, which Israel accused of being behind the attack. The bodies of the three teens were found in a field near Hebron on June 30.

The abduction and killing sparked a summer of rising tensions that climaxed with Operation Protective Edge, the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in and around the Gaza Strip.

Israel and Gaza-based terror groups reached an interim ceasefire agreement in late August.