Israeli official: The exchange deal negotiations with Hamas have reached a dead end
The Israeli army’s missing persons file official, General Nitzan Alon, informed the families of hostages on Tuesday that negotiations with Hamas to reach a swap deal have reached a dead end.
Israel holds at least 9,500 Palestinian prisoners in its prisons, and estimates that there are 101 hostages in the Gaza Strip, while Hamas announced the killing of dozens of them in random Israeli raids.
Channel 12 reported that General Alon held a conversation without clarifying the means with the families of the Israeli hostages in Gaza, during which he said that the negotiations have reached a dead end.
“At the moment there is no agreement,” Alon added, stressing that the gaps are very large.
With the mediation of Egypt and Qatar and the support of the United States, Israel and Hamas have been holding months of faltering indirect negotiations to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and a prisoner exchange.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is obstructing the conclusion of an agreement by insisting on continuing to occupy the Netzarim Corridor, which divides the Gaza Strip into north and south, in addition to the Rafah crossing and the Philadelphi Corridor on the border with Egypt, which Hamas rejects.
One of the representatives of the prisoners’ families asked about the possibility of setting a time frame for reaching an agreement, and the latter replied, “I cannot”.
Here, another representative of one of the families said, “There is no timetable, which means another four months in light of the US presidential elections (next November) and there will be no agreement”.
According to channel 12, “the general impression among the families of the detainees is one of frustration and pessimism.”
In contempt of the international community, Tel Aviv continues the war, ignoring the UN Security Council resolution to stop it immediately, and the International Court of Justice’s orders to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and to improve the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.
Israel is also defying a request by the International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor Karim Khan to issue arrest warrants for its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant, for their responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into the largest prison in the world, besieging it for the 18th year, and its war has forced about two million of its citizens, numbering about 2.3 million Palestinians, to flee in catastrophic conditions, with a severe and deliberate shortage of food, water and medicine.
