From the Liveblog of
Saturday, December 2, 2023
Top Hamas official says hostage talks off until war ends
Gianluca Pacchiani is the Arab affairs reporter for The Times of Israel
Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas’ politburo, says in an interview with Al Jazeera that negotiations for further release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners have halted, and that there will be no further exchanges until the war ends.
Al-Arouri claims that Hamas has released all the women and children kidnapped on October 7 as well as all the foreign prisoners, and that the remaining hostages in its hands are all soldiers or former soldiers.
Israel says Hamas continues to hold 15 women and two small children who were to be released under a truce deal, which ended Friday.
Remaining hostages include soldiers as well as older men, some of whom still serve in the IDF reserves, Al-Arouri claims.
He says that the terror group has set different terms for their release, and claims that Israel has rejected them.
The Mossad spy agency said earlier that a negotiating team that had been in Qatar has been ordered home with talks on extending a truce reaching a “dead end.”
However, Egyptian officials told the Wall Street Journal that Qatari negotiators were still in Israel and Egyptians in Gaza, denying talks had collapsed.
Al-Arouri insists that the only way for Israel to free its hostages is by releasing all Palestinian prisoners, reiterating a demand the terror group has been making since the start of the war.
“[Israel] breaking the resistance in Gaza and controlling the Gaza Strip are just illusions,” al-Arouri says, noting that Israel has not managed to gain control over Gaza City or other parts in the north of the coastal enclave.
The terror chief says Hamas is ready to exchange bodies of Israeli hostages for bodies of Hamas terrorists held by Israel, but that it needs time to exhume the dead Israelis – who it claims were all killed in IDF bombardments.
Following Thursday’s shooting attack by two Hamas members at a bus stop at the entrance to Jerusalem in which four Israelis were killed, al-Arouri says that Hamas is confident that after Jerusalem, the West Bank will soon join the battle.
