Report: Hamas has agreed to temporary IDF presence in Gaza in potential hostage deal
WSJ says terror group has submitted list of hostages it will release, and Israel has agreed to gradual withdrawal from Philadelphi; Mossad chief meets Qatari PM in Doha
After more than a year of objections, Hamas has given in to an Israeli demand that the IDF remain in Gaza temporarily under a potential ceasefire-hostage deal, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing Arab mediators.
Hamas had for long months insisted that it would not agree to a deal unless it included a permanent end to the war in Gaza and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Strip. However, the report said the terror organization is seemingly easing its demands, and has also provided mediators with a list of hostages that it would release in the first phase of a new deal.
The mediators told The Journal that the list consisted of US nationals, women, older hostages and those with medical conditions, and also included the names of five hostages who have been confirmed to be dead.
The report added that Israeli negotiators were pushing for more hostages to be released in the initial phase of the ceasefire. At the same time, it said they had agreed to a gradual withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border. Hamas has also reportedly agreed that it would not have any involvement in running the Palestinian side of the Rafah Crossing between Egypt and Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long vowed that Israeli troops would remain on the route.
Mossad chief David Barnea met with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani in Doha on Wednesday to discuss a potential hostage release and Gaza ceasefire deal, a source familiar tells The Times of Israel, confirming an Axios report.
Mossad chief David Barnea visited Doha and met with the prime minister of Qatar on Wednesday to discuss the latest ceasefire and hostage release proposal, a source familiar with the meeting told The Times of Israel, confirming a report in the Axios news outlet.
The meeting is part of efforts to reach a deal before the inauguration of Donald Trump in January after months of deadlocked talks.
According to the WSJ, the proposal being negotiated would see up to 30 hostages released in a 60-day ceasefire in exchange for which Israel would release Palestinian prisoners from its prisons and up the amount of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip.
This is significantly fewer hostages than last year’s deal in which 10 or so hostages were released every day during a week-long truce.
A Western diplomat in the region told Reuters a deal was taking shape but was likely to be limited in scope, involving the release of only a handful of hostages and a short pause in hostilities.
Netanyahu’s office declined the WSJ’s request for comment on the report, but Dani Miran, whose son Omri Miran is being held hostage in Gaza, told Channel 12 News on Thursday that the prime minister was giving two different groups of hostages’ relatives different information.
Netanyahu met separately on Sunday evening with two hostage family groups in Jerusalem — the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents the majority of families, and the Tikva Forum, which represents a hawkish minority who have been significantly more supportive of the government’s handling of the war than the main forum.
However, Miran told Channel 12 that his wife, Lishay, had been in the meeting with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum to whom Netanyahu had said a deal was brewing while his sons attended the Tikva Forum meeting where the prime minister said that “at this stage, there is no deal.”
Netanyahu did, however, meet with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and other top Israeli officials on Thursday as the Biden administration makes a final push to get a deal signed before Trump takes office next month.
Earlier this month, Trump threatened that there would be “hell to pay” in the Middle East if the hostages were not released by the time he starts his second term on January 20.
Other than Netanyahu and Sullivan, the meeting included Barnea, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and the government’s point man on the hostages, Gal Hirsch.
After meetings in Israel, Sullivan was set to travel to Qatar and Egypt — the two Arab countries mediating between Israel and Hamas along with the US — to further discuss ongoing negotiations.
Numerous attempts to reach a new hostage deal have repeatedly failed over the last year or so as Israel and Hamas have accused each other of sabotaging efforts and have refused to budge on key issues.
However, negotiators have hoped to use the momentum of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah last month to reach an agreement in Gaza too and end the war that broke out on October 7 last year with Hamas’s unprecedented attack in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages.
It is believed that 96 hostages remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Other than the 105 hostages released in last year’s deal, Hamas set free four hostages. Eight hostages have also been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 38 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
