Hamas will only negotiate Biden's 2 July Gaza ceasefire proposal

Hamas is ready to be involved in “serious” negotiations based on the proposal of US President Joe Biden that was declared in July, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Speaking to The New Arab, Basim Naiem, a senior official of Hamas, said, “We will not accept any conditions that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently invented just to sabotage all the efforts in reaching a ceasefire deal in Gaza.”

“We have not found any progress in the Israeli position. Netanyahu is still insisting on keeping his army in Gaza and not ending the war, which means that he will resume it after the first phase of the deal,” Mahmoud Merdawi, a Turkey-based senior Hamas official, told TNA.

“Our demands are clear. Any deal must include the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, allow the displaced people to return to their houses, stop the war, rebuild Gaza, and a real prisoners swap,” he said.