Hamas Seeks Comprehensive Truce, “Israel” Hell-Bent on War, Blockade

“Our consistent position is that the only option [out there] is the conclusion of a comprehensive truce agreement,” Osama Hamdan, Hamas’s senior representative in Lebanon said.

The Palestinian official said: “The occupiers always try to focus on the issue of captive exchange,” and evade the group’s other demands.

He said those demands included the complete cessation of the “Israeli” aggression, the entity’s full withdrawal, the return of the displaced people, an end to the siege that has been imposed by Tel Aviv on Gaza, and the beginning of the coastal sliver’s reconstruction process.

The remarks came after two days of intense negotiations in the Egyptian capital of Cairo with Egyptian, Qatari, and American mediators, following which the Palestinian negotiators returned to Gaza for consultation with the group’s leadership.

“We negotiated with mediators, including the Americans, concerning certain issues and we arrived at a specific mechanism,” Hamdan said.

The Palestinian negotiators, however, still needed to consult Hamas’s leadership concerning the mechanism before coming up with a “final standpoint.”