Beirut, Lebanon
CNN
—
The fate of the 120 hostages remaining in Gaza is crucial to any deal to end the long-running, bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas, but a senior Hamas official told CNN that “no one knows” how many of the hostages are still alive, and that any deal to free them must include a permanent ceasefire and guarantees of a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
In an interview with CNN, Hamas spokesman and Politburo member Osama Hamdan discussed the militant group’s stance on stalled ceasefire talks, whether Hamas regrets its decision to attack Israel in light of the rising Palestinian death toll, and commented on a leaked message earlier this week from Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in the Gaza Strip, who is considered the final decision maker on any peace agreement.
The US believes Hamas holds the key to the negotiations. “The bargaining has to stop,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC on Thursday, urging Shinwar to end the war. “He’s underground, he’s relatively safe. The people he claims to represent are suffering every day.”
Speaking to CNN in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, Hamdan said the latest proposal – an Israeli plan first made public by U.S. President Joe Biden late last month – did not meet the group’s demands for an end to the war.
Hamdan, who has served as part of Hamas’ negotiating team there, told CNN that Hamas “needs a clear Israeli position: accept a ceasefire, fully withdraw from Gaza and let the Palestinians decide for themselves about reconstruction and their future (of lifting the blockade). We are ready to discuss a fair deal on a prisoner exchange.”
Negotiations over the US-backed proposal have intensified in recent days but appeared to hit a deadlock on Wednesday after Hamas presented its response to the document, 12 days after it first received it.
Blinken expressed dissatisfaction with Hamas’ decision to submit a “number of changes,” saying some of the changes “go beyond the positions (Hamas) has taken previously.”
“Some of the changes are doable, some are not,” Blinken said at a news conference in Doha on Wednesday.
The U.S.-backed ceasefire plan approved by the UN Security Council on Monday outlines a phased approach. The first phase would see a six-week ceasefire, some hostages exchanged for Palestinian prisoners, and Israeli forces withdraw from populated areas of Gaza. The second phase – a permanent end to the war and a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza – would only be implemented after further negotiations between the two sides.
But Hamdan told CNN that the duration of the ceasefire was a key issue for Hamas, which was concerned that Israel was not willing to implement the second phase of the agreement. He said the end to hostilities had to be permanent and that Israel must withdraw completely from Gaza.
Abed Khaled/Reuters
People walk through the debris of an Israeli military attack on the area where Israeli hostages were rescued on Saturday, in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, Sunday, June 9.
“Israel only wants the ceasefire for six weeks and then they want to return to fighting. I don’t think the US has been able to convince Israel so far to accept (a permanent ceasefire),” he said, adding that he believed the US needed to convince Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire as part of any agreement.
The White House has repeatedly stressed that this is a plan accepted by the Israeli government, but Israel has not yet publicly committed to the deal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been under pressure to voice his support for the current plan, has repeatedly said the war will not end until Israel eliminates Hamas.
Blinken told NBC that when they met a few days ago, Netanyahu “reaffirmed” that “Israel supports the proposal and is prepared to say yes,” and that he placed full blame on Hamas for the stalled negotiations.
“Hamas must show that they also want this situation to end, and if they do, then we can end this. If they don’t, then it means they want the war to continue,” Blinken said.
Speaking to CNN in his modest office decorated with a large map of Gaza and a panoramic photo of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Hamdan repeatedly dodged questions about Hamas’ role in the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. He called the Oct. 7 terror attacks that sparked the current war in Gaza a “reaction against the occupation.”
The October 7 attack was the deadliest in Israel’s history, killing more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 more hostages to Gaza.
Israel retaliated quickly, declaring war on Hamas and launching an intense bombing campaign and a ground invasion a few weeks later.
The operation has had a devastating effect on the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip: more than 37,000 people have been killed, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. It is estimated that around 90% of the Gaza population has been displaced by the fighting.
Gaza authorities do not distinguish between civilian and Hamas fighter casualties, but an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman has previously acknowledged that the majority of those killed in the operation were civilians.
When pressed repeatedly by CNN about whether Hamas regretted its decision to attack Israel, Hamdan blamed Israel for the situation and said the attacks were a “reaction to the occupation.”
“The (Israeli) occupation forces are responsible for this. If you resist them, (they) will kill you, and if you don’t resist them, (they) will kill you and deport you. So what do we do, just wait?” he said.
Hamdan also dismissed as false reports that Sinwar had suggested the deaths of thousands of Palestinians were a “necessary sacrifice”.
Sinwar has not been seen in public since the Oct. 7 attack. He is believed to be hiding out somewhere in the network of tunnels beneath the Gaza Strip. He is designated a terrorist by the United States, the European Union, Britain and other countries.
Ali Jadara/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
On April 13, 2022, in Gaza City, Hamas Representative for the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, attended a meeting with members of Palestinian groups.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using Gaza civilians as human shields, and earlier this week The Wall Street Journal published messages purportedly leaked by Sinwar to other Hamas leaders in which he expressed a firm determination to keep fighting, regardless of the cost to life.
Hamdan told CNN the message was “fake.”
“This is a fake message sent by a non-Palestinian person to the Wall Street Journal as part of pressure on Hamas and public provocation against its leadership,” he said, without providing evidence. “Nobody can accept the killing of Palestinians, their own people.”
When Israel launched its war against Hamas, Prime Minister Netanyahu said its aim was to “destroy Hamas and free the hostages being held in Gaza.”
But more than eight months later, the goal of completely eliminating the group seems out of reach: While the IDF has killed several Hamas commanders, top Gaza leaders, including Sinwar, continue to elude Israeli military attacks, and Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel, despite the damage caused to its infrastructure, although much more sporadically than at the beginning of the conflict.
U.S. intelligence officials believe Sinwar likely believes Hamas could survive Israel’s attempt to destroy it.
At the same time, Netanyahu is under increasing pressure to reach an agreement that would ensure the return of the hostages remaining in Gaza. Israel believes more than 70 of the more than 100 still being held in Gaza are alive.
Hamdan told CNN he did not know how many people were alive. “We don’t know anything about that. Nobody knows,” he said, claiming without providing evidence that three people, including an American, were killed in an Israeli operation to free four hostages on Saturday.
There are fears the number of dead hostages may be higher than the official toll. Hamas told international mediators in April that it could not release the remaining 40 hostages, including women, sick and elderly men, as part of Israel’s first-phase agreement because it did not hold 40 hostages who met the conditions for their release.
Asked by Israeli television on Thursday whether Israel knew how many hostages were surviving, opposition leader Benny Gantz, who resigned from Israel’s war cabinet last weekend, said: “We know a number very close to that number.”
Asked about the testimony of doctors who treated the released hostages, who said they had been subjected to mental and physical abuse and beaten on an hourly basis, Hamdan again blamed Israel for their suffering.
“If they have mental problems, I believe it is because of what Israel has done in Gaza, because no one can stand Israel bombing every day, killing civilians, killing women and children. They have seen it with their own eyes,” he said, adding that comparing images of the hostages before and after their eight-month captivity “they are better than before,” which is patently false.
