Hamas says its ready for immediate talks on ceasefire deal, but Israel demands they lay down weapons

Hayya: Hamas ready to hold talks for ‘comprehensive’ peace deal
Friday, 18 April 2025

https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/04/18/746393/Palestestinian-Hamas-Wants-Comprehensive-Deal-To-End-Gaza-War-Rejects-Israeli-Netanyahu-Partial-Peace-Proposal

The Palestinian resistance group Hamas has declared its readiness to immediately begin negotiations on a “comprehensive” peace deal in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas said on Thursday that it is opposed to any Israeli proposal for a partial Gaza ceasefire, reiterating that the truce between the two sides should lead to a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from the besieged territory.

Khalil al-Hayya, the Palestinian resistance group's chief negotiator and head of Hamas in Gaza, said Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has set “impossible” conditions.

“We will not be part of passing this policy,” Hayya said in a televised speech broadcast on its official digital platforms.

“Partial agreements on Gaza serve only as political cover for Netanyahu’s agenda of continued war, genocide and starvation," he explained.

He affirmed Hamas's readiness for an exchange of Israeli captives for Palestinian prisoners, reaffirming that Gazan leaders were after a full-scale peace agreement with Tel Aviv, including a lasting truce and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian land.

“We are ready to immediately engage in comprehensive package negotiations for the release of all Israeli hostages in exchange for an agreed number of our prisoners held by the occupation, a complete end to the war, full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the start of reconstruction, and the lifting of the blockade.”

Netanyahu has long refused to end Israel's genocidal war against the Gaza Strip until Hamas’s military and governing capabilities have been fully dismantled.

Israel's extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said Tel Aviv would not end the war on Gaza until a “complete victory” is reached.

“The time has come to open the gates of hell on Hamas, to deepen the fighting until the complete occupation of the Strip, the elimination of Hamas, and the implementation of President Trump’s plan for the voluntary exit and rehabilitation of Gazans in another country,” he wrote on X.
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Hayya also called for immediate international intervention to end the Israeli blockade on Gaza, warning that “over two million people in Gaza are being subjected to genocide by starvation.”

More than 51,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in a brutal Israeli onslaught since October 2023, most of them women and children.

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