Hamas: US has no genuine will for cease-fire in Gaza
A senior member of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas said in a statement that there is no genuine will by the United States to establish a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
Osama Hamdan, who represents Hamas in Lebanon, noted that the US is trying to give Israel more time to carry out more massacres in the Gaza Strip.
Hamdan said that the US’s proposal in cease-fire talks does not include any cease-fire or troops’ withdrawal from Gaza.
His comments came after the US, Qatar and Egypt, the three mediators of a possible cease-fire deal, concluded two-days of talks on ending Israel’s attacks in Gaza in Qatar’s capital on Saturday. The talks are expected to resume in Cairo in the coming days after two days of negotiations in Doha.
The mediators said they presented a bridging cease-fire proposal to both sides and that negotiations were making progress, but they also cautioned that there is still work to be done.
They also reported progress in negotiations and a US official said remaining gaps were “bridgeable.”
US President Joe Biden also said a cease-fire was closer after talks in Doha.
But Hamas political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri said the optimism that a deal was close after talks in Doha was “an illusion.”
“We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats,” he said.
Meanwhile, the US’s top diplomat Anthony Blinken was set to arrive in Israel on Sunday, where he is expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials.
Israel’s negotiating team on Saturday expressed “cautious optimism” on the possibility of advancing a deal, according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office.
However, Hamas sees Netanyahu as the main obstacle to a cease-fire and an exchange deal for the remaining captives and Palestinian prisoners.
“From day one, we said we will not accept a temporary arrangement, it was done in November 2023, and the Israelis undermined that,” Hamdan has told Al Jazeera.
Israel’s war on Gaza has left more than 40,000 Palestinians dead and more than 92,000 wounded since last October.