Hamas said on Sunday that it’s “ready to immediately sit at the negotiating table” following a post on Truth Social from President Trump that demanded the Palestinian group agree to his “terms” for a Gaza ceasefire deal.
“Everyone wants the Hostages HOME. Everyone wants this War to end! The Israelis have accepted my Terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well,” Trump wrote.
“I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” the president added.
While Trump claimed Israel had agreed to the terms, Haaretz reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still considering it and that the full proposal hasn’t yet been conveyed to Israel. A source in contact with the US administration expressed reservations about the potential for a deal, saying that it appeared Washington was still allowing Netanyahu to realize his ambitions since the proposal didn’t include a guarantee for a full Israeli withdrawal and an end to the genocidal war, making Hamas unlikely to agree.
According to a report from Axios, a new US proposal was sent to Hamas through an Israeli peace activist by US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The proposal would involve Hamas releasing all remaining Israeli captives, both dead and alive, in exchange for the release of 2,500 to 3,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. There would also be a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s current military operations, and the two sides would begin negotiations on a permanent ceasefire.
The Axios report said that if Hamas responded positively, the ceasefire would continue as long as negotiations did and that President Trump would work to end the conflict. But Hamas has reason to be skeptical of such an arrangement since Israel violated a similar deal earlier this year, and the US never increased the pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire deal after Hamas released Edan Alexander, an Israeli-American IDF soldier who was captured on October 7, 2023.
Drop Site News reporter Jeremy Scahill said that a senior Hamas official informed him the US proposal lacks a comprehensive framework. “A senior Hamas official told me that the ‘Trump concept’ proposed to Hamas was that they release all Israeli captives immediately as an ‘initial gesture’ and Trump would promise to call for an end to the ‘war’ and push Israel to negotiate terms. No formal framework was provided,” Scahill wrote on X.
“Hamas has said repeatedly it is ready to negotiate a comprehensive deal that involves releasing all Israelis at once. But the terms matter and the Hamas official cited the Edan Alexander situation where Trump did not uphold the US agreement after he was released from Gaza,” Scahill added.
Hamas said in its statement that it was ready to “discuss the release of all prisoners in exchange for a clear declaration to end the war, a total withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and creation of a committee of independent Palestinians to run the Gaza Strip.”
Hamas added that it demands a “guarantee that the enemy will openly and explicitly commit to what is agreed upon, so that previous experiences of reaching agreements that are later rejected or overturned will not be repeated.”
