Israel offered Hamas, via the mediation of Qatar and Egypt, a two-month pause in fighting and raids in Gaza in exchange for the release of all hostages, according to a report Monday on the U.S. news site Axios.
Qatar, which played the role of mediator in a previous truce agreement and the release of detainees, disputed the reports on Tuesday.
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The leaks to the media are incomplete "or completely false", said the spokesperson for the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Majed al-Ansari, without being willing to say more about the negotiations which are continuing, according to him, with "force."
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Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar; hostage families call for their release; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
(Photos: Ido Erez, Sharon Tzur, Eli Mandelbaum)
An Egyptian official told the Associated Press on Tuesday that Hamas rejected Israel's offer for a two-month cease-fire in exchange for hostages, and a free passage out of Gaza for its leaders. Hamas demands a complete end to the fighting before hostages are freed and Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza, the official said adding that mediators are working on their own proposal to advance a deal
According to the Axios website, the Israeli proposal does not imply the end of the war in Gaza or even a political solution, but a second truce after that of a week earlier in the war which allowed the release of around a hundred hostages at the end November, who had been abducted to Gaza during the unprecedented and brutal Hamas attack on October 7, in exchange for triple the number of Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel.
According to Israeli authorities, who are under pressure from families of the hostages to accept a release agreement, 132 hostages are still in the Gaza Strip, among whom 28 are presumed dead.
Israel's proposal provides for the return of living hostages and remains of the dead ones in several phases, the first of which would include women and men aged over 60, according to Axios.
This would be followed by female soldiers, men aged under 60 but who are not military, then Israeli soldiers, then finally the remains of hostages.
Under the plan, Israel and Hamas would agree in advance on the number of Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for each hostage according to their category, then negotiate the name of each Palestinian, according to Axios.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with famliy members of the Gaza hostages
(Photo: Spokesman, Prime Minister's Office)
This plan also provides for a redeployment of Israeli soldiers outside the main towns of Gaza, and the gradual return of hundreds of thousands of people displaced from the north to the south of Gaza in an attempt to escape the violence, also according to Axios.
During a press conference in Doha, the head of Qatari diplomacy declared for his part that "the only way out (of the conflict) is to negotiate and establish a lasting cease-fire between the two parties."
The publication of the Axios article comes as U.S. President Joe Biden's top adviser for the Middle East, Brett McGurk, visits Egypt and Qatar this week.
The Wall Street Journal suggested on Sunday that the United States, Egypt and Qatar are trying to convince Israel and Hamas to agree on the release of the hostages over a period of 90 days in exchange in particular for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.