On Friday, Axios revealed details regarding the ongoing talks to release hostages held by Hamas in exchange for an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza.
The website quoted three Israeli officials as saying that Qatari mediators informed Israel that Hamas had “agreed in principle” to resume talks on a new agreement, to secure the release of about 30 hostages held in Gaza, in exchange for stopping the fighting for several weeks.
Israeli officials, according to Axios, hope to obtain further clarification over the weekend, to find out whether Hamas is actually serious about the new agreement. An Israeli official said that the Qatari message is still very preliminary, “but it is positive because for the first time since... "The end of the previous deal, Hamas indicates that it is ready to return to the negotiating table."
Twelve weeks after the attack launched by Hamas fighters on towns in southern Israel, which they say killed 1,200 and took 240 hostages, Israeli forces turned large areas of the Gaza Strip into rubble.
Almost all of the Strip's 2.3 million residents have been displaced from their homes at least once, and many are now fleeing for a third or fourth time, often taking refuge in makeshift tents or huddled under tarpaulins and plastic in the open.
On Friday, the health authorities in Gaza announced that 187 Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids during the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths to 21,507, or about one percent of the Strip’s population, and it is feared that thousands of bodies are still buried under the rubble of destroyed neighborhoods.
Mediation efforts undertaken by Egypt and Qatar to negotiate a ceasefire have not yielded fruit since the collapse of a week-long truce at the end of November.
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Axios: Hamas agreed to resume negotiations to release the hostages