Gaza truce 'closer than ever' but differences persist over hostage-prisoner swap

Israel's objection to releasing some Palestinian detainees and uncertainty over border strip withdrawal are among the final hurdles, sources say

A Palestinian woman wraps herself and her grandchildren in blankets as they prepare to sleep in their tent at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza. AP

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Hamas and other militant groups say a Gaza ceasefire deal is now “closer than ever” but sources have claimed key differences over the proposed hostages-for-detainees swap are among the issues yet to be settled.

Speaking to The National on Sunday, the sources said the two sides remain at odds over details of the planned exchange, with Israel rejecting the names of 70 from among 200 Palestinians serving long prison terms that Hamas wants freed from Israeli jails.

It said Hamas had agreed to an Israeli demand that the 200 and their families leave the Palestinian territories to live in exile only on the condition Israel does not trigger a veto on releasing any of them.

The release of Palestinians held in prisons would be in return for Hamas freeing some of the estimated 100 hostages it is still holding in Gaza. The Israeli military says about 40 are believed to have died in captivity.

Hamas, say the sources, was prepared to release between 20 and 30 captives at the rate of one every 48 hours during a 60-day truce proposed by US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators. In return, Hamas wants Israel to free about 1,000 Palestinians incarcerated in its prisons on security-related charges.

The latest round of negotiations is taking place simultaneously in Egypt and Qatar. Talks have been energised by US president-elect Donald Trump's threat that “there will be hell to pay” if the hostages held by Hamas are not released before his inauguration on January 20.

“The possibility of reaching an agreement [for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal] is closer than ever, provided the enemy stops imposing new conditions,” Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said in a rare joint statement issued after talks in Cairo this weekend.

Israel, for its part, wants all hostages to be released within the proposed 60-day truce, with female soldiers, US citizens and the elderly and ill the first to be freed. Hamas, however, maintains that releasing all the hostages must be part of a “comprehensive” deal that provides for an eventual full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire.

Israel is refusing to commit to a timetable for a gradual withdrawal from Salah Al Din, a narrow border strip on the Palestinian side of the Egypt-Gaza border, creating another obstacle, the sources say. The area, also known as the Philadelphi Corridor, encompasses the Rafah crossing to Egypt, the only exit from Gaza not controlled by the Israelis.

Egypt closed the Rafah crossing in protest against the Israeli capture of the area, which it views as a breach of its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and subsequent accords. Israel insists it must have some security presence in the area to prevent Hamas from using underground tunnels to smuggle weapons from Egypt, which Cairo denies.

A Hamas leader, meanwhile, was quoted by AFP on Saturday as saying negotiators had made “significant and important progress” in recent days. “Most points related to the ceasefire and prisoner exchange issues have been agreed upon,” he said on condition of anonymity.

“Some unresolved points remain but they do not hinder the process. The agreement could be finalised before the end of this year, provided it is not disrupted by [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's new conditions.”

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was hopeful a deal would prevail but avoided predicting when. “I don't want to hazard a guess as to what the probability is,” he said at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It should happen. It needs to happen. We need to get people home,” he said, referring to the release of hostages under a ceasefire deal.

The US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators have been trying without success for a year to broker a deal to pause the Gaza war and release the hostages. As they held seemingly endless negotiations in Cairo, Doha and elsewhere, the war in Gaza continued to take a heavy toll on the 2.3 million residents.

More than 45,200 Palestinians have been killed to date in Israel's bombardment of Gaza and more than twice that number injured, according to the Hamas-run government in Gaza, whose figures are widely believed to be accurate although they do not distinguish between combatants and civilians in death tolls.

The war, which has also displaced the vast majority of Gaza's residents and razed most of the territory's built-up areas, has drawn accusations of genocide and war crimes against Israel, which Mr Netanyahu's government has repeatedly denied.