Top Hamas leader says Netanyahu blocking Gaza ceasefire deal
Khalil al-Hayya told Al Jazeera that Hamas has been ready to sign a ceasefire deal for Gaza, but Netanyahu has prevented that from happening.
“The last Israeli proposal was presented on May 27. It was presented by the Israeli occupation and adopted by [US President Joe] Biden word by word. The US also went to the Security Council and it was adopted there. Hamas welcomed the principles put out by Biden and the decision of the Security Council. We expected an opportunity for an agreement. We agreed to the talks,” said al-Hayya, who leads Hamas’s negotiating team.
Yet Israel started to evade any agreement, with Netanyahu imposing new conditions and “falsely” claiming that Hamas had rejected the proposal, al-Hayya said.
“In fact, we agreed to Israel’s proposal that was presented on May 29,” he said. “We only sent questions to the mediators who confirmed that all our questions are approved.”
Al-Hayya went on to criticise the US for the lack of progress.
“Unfortunately, the American side is following two paths. In the first path, it wants an agreement, yet it does not pressure the Israelis. In the second path, it unfortunately spreads an atmosphere of hope and positivity that is not true,” he said.
Al-Hayya added that the Israelis have refused to compromise in recent talks.
“On Thursday, we asked [the mediators], ‘What have you agreed to after two weeks of talks?’ They said they did not reach anything with the Israelis, and we asked them to bring solutions to all the issues of disagreement. Unfortunately, today, the negotiations are [being held] over the new conditions put out by Netanyahu – and that’s not an acceptable way to negotiate.”
The senior Hamas leader told Al Jazeera that the six captives whose bodies had been found in Gaza could have been brought back alive had Israel agreed to a ceasefire deal.
He said Hamas has shown flexibility in negotiations, including by reducing the number of Palestinian prisoners whose release they’ve been seeking as well as agreeing to the proposal presented by Biden and backed by the UN Security Council.
But Netanyahu has met Hamas’s flexibility with evasion and new conditions, al-Hayya said.
These include a refusal to release elderly prisoners who are serving life sentences and an insistence on Israeli forces remaining in the so-called Netzarim corridor in central Gaza and the Philadelphi Corridor on the Palestinian enclave’s border with Egypt.
Al-Hayya said there will be no agreement without Israeli forces withdrawing from the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors.
He added that the Palestinian people see no hope, except through resistance, and will not surrender.
Hundreds of thousands of people expected to go on strike in Israel
Israel is already in an economic downturn from the war. Now, there are going to be hundreds of thousands of people not at work and hundreds of thousands of students not in school.
The airport, transportation, schools and private sectors – technology, mechanics, manufacturing – are getting involved. This is going to impact a broad spectrum of industries in Israel.
They are all going to be taking to the streets to send a message to the government that too much time has gone by without a deal.
It’s worth mentioning that one day of the economic shutdown is significant enough to make the government change course in their political actions, because it has done so in the past. The amount of money that is lost in just one day is something that sends a message to the government that something needs to be done differently here.
