DOHA, Qatar (news agencies) — A top Hamas official said the Palestinian militant group is losing faith in the United States’ ability to mediate a cease-fire in Gaza ahead of a new round of talks scheduled for this week amid mounting pressure to bring an end to the 10-month-old war with Israel.
Osama Hamdan told media in an interview Tuesday that Hamas will only participate if the talks focus on implementing a proposal detailed by U.S. President Joe Biden in May and endorsed internationally.
The U.S. referred to it as an Israeli proposal and Hamas agreed to it in principle, but Israel said that Biden’s speech was not entirely consistent with the proposal itself. Both sides later proposed changes, leading each to accuse the other of obstructing a deal.
Hamas is especially resistant to Israel’s demand that it maintain a lasting military presence in two strategic areas of Gaza after any cease-fire, conditions that were only made public in recent weeks.
“We have informed the mediators that … any meeting should be based on talking about implementation mechanisms and setting deadlines rather than negotiating something new,” said Hamdan, who is a member of Hamas’ Political Bureau, which includes the group’s top political leaders and sets its policies. “Otherwise, Hamas finds no reason to participate.”
It was not clear late Wednesday if Hamas would attend the talks beginning Thursday.
Hamdan spoke amid a new push for an end to the war, sparked by the Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and dragged about 250 hostages into Gaza. Israel responded with a devastating bombardment and ground invasion that has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians and decimated wide swaths of the territory.
There are now fears that the conflict could ignite a wider conflagration.
In an hourlong interview, Hamdan accused Israel of not engaging in good faith and said the group does not believe the U.S. can or will apply pressure on Israel to seal a deal.
Hamdan claimed Israel has “either sent a non-voting delegation (to the negotiations) or changed delegations from one round to another, so we would start again, or it has imposed new conditions.”
Israeli officials had no immediate comment on the claim, but Israel has denied sabotaging talks and accuses Hamas of doing so.
During the interview, Hamdan provided copies of several iterations of the cease-fire proposal and the group’s written responses. A regional official familiar with the talks verified the documents were genuine. The official offered the assessment on condition of anonymity in order to share information not made public.
The documents show that at several points Hamas attempted to add additional guarantors —including Russia, Turkey and the United Nations — but Israel’s responses always included only the existing mediators, the U.S., Egypt and Qatar.
In a statement Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister’s office said some changes it has asked for were merely “clarifications” that added details, such as to clauses that dealt with how Palestinians will return to northern Gaza, how many hostages will be released during specific phases and whether Israel can veto which Palestinian prisoners will be released in exchange for Israeli hostages. It accused Hamas of asking for 29 changes to the proposal.
“The fact is that it is Hamas which is preventing the release of our hostages, and which continues to oppose the outline,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this month.
Hamdan, however, claimed that more than once Hamas accepted in whole or in large part a proposal put to them by the mediators only to have Israel reject it out of hand, ignore it, or launch major new military operations in the days that followed.
On one occasion, one day after Hamas accepted a cease-fire proposal, Israel launched a new operation in Rafah in southern Gaza. Israel said the proposal remained far from its demands.
Hamdan said that CIA director William Burns told Hamas via mediators at the time that Israel would agree to the deal.
But, he said, “the Americans were unable to convince the Israelis. I think they did not pressure the Israelis.”
U.S. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters Tuesday that Washington is making great efforts to prevent an escalation of violence and end suffering in the region.
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