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Monday, August 18, 2025
Arab diplomat to ToI: Latest Hamas truce proposal erases most of demands that caused talks to collapse
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleJacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
An Arab diplomat tells The Times of Israel that Hamas’s chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya presented Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani with an updated ceasefire and hostage release proposal that backs away from the vast majority of the demands raised by the terror group that led to the collapse of talks last month.
The proposal will see the release of 10 living hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinian security prisoners during a 60-day truce, the diplomat says, adding that the deal will also see the release of bodies of slain hostages.
The proposal is being presented to Israel today though Jerusalem has insisted that it is no longer interested in partial deals, saying that it will only agree to end the war if Hamas releases all of the hostages at once, disarms, allows for the demilitarization of Gaza, grants Israel overall security control of the Strip, and hands over control to a body that isn’t the Palestinian Authority.
The Arab mediators believe that the Israeli demands don’t give them anything to work with and instead have been working to first secure a partial deal, albeit one they are framing as a “pathway to a comprehensive agreement.”
Similar to the proposal crafted by US special envoy Steve Witkoff earlier this year, the latest proposal envisions negotiations on the terms of a permanent ceasefire commencing at the start of the 60-day truce, with the mediators aiming to secure an agreement on those details by the end of the two-month temporary ceasefire, the Arab diplomat says.
Earlier today, US President Donald Trump appeared to align with the Israeli position, writing on Truth Social that the hostages will only be released when Hamas is destroyed.
The Arab diplomat speculates that the Truth Social post was a “pressure tactic” aimed at bringing Hamas to accept the terms of Witkoff’s original hostage deal proposal.
The diplomat says that the proposal submitted by Hamas is almost entirely identical to the one proposed by Witkoff.
The Times of Israel Community.