Senior Hamas official: US plan’s 72 hour window for releasing hostages ‘unrealistic’

Senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk tells Al Jazeera that Hamas accepts in principle the main facets of the US plan for ending the Gaza war, but he argues that the proposal’s “implementation requires negotiation.”

He takes particular issue with the plan’s envisioning of the release of all remaining hostages within 72 hours, calling it “unrealistic under the current circumstances.”

The terror group has, in the past, told Arab mediators that it doesn’t know where some of the bodies of slain hostages are located and that it may take some time to deliver all of them back to Israel.

It is unclear whether the US is interested in holding additional talks or whether it expects Hamas to accept the proposal as is.

Parts of the 20-point plan are indeed vague enough that subsequent talks would have been required regardless. For example, the plan states that Israeli forces “will withdraw to the agreed-upon line” upon the sides’ acceptance of the proposal, without specifying where that line is or whether it still needs to be negotiated.

It is possible that it is referring to the illustrative map demarcating the phased withdrawal of Israeli troops, but the image doesn’t appear to be created to exact scale.

Marzouk says the US plan’s envisioning of the creation of an international stabilization force to replace the IDF in Gaza “requires clarification.”

Marzouk also tells Al Jazeera that Hamas will not disarm before the Israeli “occupation” ends, reiterating that issues regarding Gaza’s future should be discussed within a comprehensive Palestinian national framework, which Hamas will be part of.

He says that another round of negotiations needs to be held regarding Hamas’s weapons.

The US plan doesn’t appear to leave this question up for debate, though, stating that all of them must be destroyed and that Gaza must be demilitarized.

“We will hand over [our] weapons to the future Palestinian state, and whoever governs Gaza will have [our] weapons in his hand,” Marzouk says.

Regardless, Marzouk insists that Hamas has negotiated openly and responsibly with the US proposal.