Hamas ready to free all captives in exchange for five-year truce with Israel

Hamas is ready to release all remaining captives held in Gaza in return for a five-year truce with Israel, an official from the Palestinian group said Saturday.

"Hamas is ready for an exchange of prisoners in a single batch and a truce for five years," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity, as a delegation from his group was set to meet mediators in Cairo later in the day.

Qatari and Egyptian mediators had presented a new proposal that includes a long-term truce in the Gaza Strip lasting between five and seven years.

It involves a prisoner exchange whereby Hamas would release all remaining Israeli captives in exchange for Israel releasing an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners, according to a BBC report on Tuesday, which cited a senior Palestinian official familiar with the ceasefire negotiations in Gaza.

The proposal includes a complete Israeli withdrawal from the besieged Palestinian enclave, and the official noted that Hamas had expressed its willingness to hand over control of Gaza to any Palestinian government agreed upon "at the national and regional levels."

Israel has outright refused Hamas controlling Gaza again once the war ends.

Speaking separately to The New Arab’s sister site, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, a Hamas official said the group was open to any proposal that leads to a permanent end to the war, "and not through partial deals through which the Israeli occupation achieves its goal of easing internal pressure."

A short-lived truce between Israel and Hamas went into effect on 19 January but collapsed around two months later when Israel resumed its strikes on the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of people.

Hamas had said it wanted to move onto the second stage of the truce, but Israel had insisted on extending the first phase, which saw the Palestinian group release dozens of Israeli and foreign captives taken on 7 October 2023 in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli detention.

 Israel says 59 captives are still being held in Gaza, and believes 24 of them are still alive, including 22 Israelis, one Thai national, and one Nepali national.

Since Israel resumed its offensive on 18 March, at least 1,978 people have been killed in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll of the war to 51,355, most of them women and children, according to the territory's health ministry.

Much of the territory has been left devastated and an ongoing Israeli blockade has left people starving with little to no medical supplies. Most of the territory's 2.3 million inhabitants have been displaced, sometimes more than once.

Agencies contributed to this report