CAIRO:
Hamas said on Sunday it rejected Israel’s new terms in Gaza ceasefire talks, further challenging the chances of a breakthrough in the latest US-backed effort to end the 10-month war.
Months of on-and-off talks have so far failed to produce an agreement on ending Israel’s devastating military operation in Gaza or releasing the last hostages captured by Hamas in its October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the war.
One of the main sticking points in the ongoing talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar is the Israeli presence in the so-called Philadelphia Corridor, a narrow 14.5-kilometer-long strip of land along the southern border of the Gaza Strip with Egypt.
Hamas said Israel had backed down from its commitment to withdraw troops from the corridor and had set new conditions, including screening displaced Palestinians when they return to the more densely populated north of the enclave after the ceasefire begins.
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“We will not accept any discussions about withdrawing from what we agreed on July 2 or about new conditions,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan told the group’s Al-Aqsa television station on Sunday.
In July, Hamas accepted a US proposal to start talks on the release of Israeli hostages, including soldiers and men, 16 days after the first phase of a deal to end the Gaza war, a senior Hamas source said. Reuters.
Hamdan also said Hamas had given mediators its response to the latest proposal and called the US claim that it was an imminent agreement false.
