GAZA, (PIC)
The High-ranking Hamas official Osama Hamdan said on Monday his Movement had previously agreed to the US President Joe Biden’s proposal to end the war in Gaza, but the US administration failed to persuade the Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu to accept it, stressing that “the Israelis retracted certain issues in Biden’s proposal.”
In an interview with Al-Jazeera on Monday, Hamdan noted that “what the US is doing is just buying more time to continue the Israeli genocide in Gaza.”
Hamdan pointed out that the agreement must achieve five specific goals including halting the aggression, withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, and reconstructing Gaza, stressing that the mediators will inform the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Hamas respects its obligations and what it had agreed upon on July 2.
The Hamas senior official said that Netanyahu responded to Hamas’s approval to ceasefire proposals with ongoing massacres, stressing that he is the one who obstructs the agreement.
Speaking at a press conference in Tel Aviv on Monday evening, Blinken claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to the proposal presented by Washington during the last round of negotiations in Doha, considering that Hamas must now accept the proposal regarding a potential ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal.
For his part, Netanyahu said in a statement issued by his office following Blinken’s remarks, that Israel is seeking to release the largest possible number of prisoners in the first stage of the deal.
