Israel announces the dispatch of a delegation to negotiate the release of hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip

Israel will send a delegation to negotiate the release of hostages held in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office reported on Thursday, the day after the Hamas said it had communicated to mediators new “ideas” to end the war.

“The Prime Minister informed President Biden of his decision to send a delegation to continue negotiations for the release of the hostages,” the president’s office said in a statement, without specifying the date or place of the discussions.

Netanyahu addressed Biden by phone on Thursday to congratulate him on the American Fourth of July holiday, But the conversation took place in the context of negotiations between Israel and Hamas for a truce agreement in Gaza.

Biden and Netanyahu “discussed Hamas’s recent response” and “the president welcomed the prime minister’s decision to authorize his negotiators to work with American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators in an effort to close the deal,” the White House said.

Hamas’s proposal, according to a source close to the negotiations on Israel’s most watched network, Channel 12, “is good,” and could open the door to an agreement between the parties “in two or three weeks.”

Nonetheless, The prime minister maintained his defence of achieving Israel’s war aims sooner: the return of the 120 hostages kidnapped by Hamas who are still in Gaza (116 of them captured on 7 October, of whom 40 are estimated to have been killed), eliminate the military and government capabilities of the Islamists and guarantee the return of citizens evacuated from the borders in the north and south of the country.

“The movement addressed the content of the ongoing deliberations in a positive spirit,” Hamas said in a statement this afternoon, according to which The head of the organization’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, conveyed his ideas to the negotiators in Qatar and Egypt “with the aim of reaching an agreement that will put an end to the brutal aggression” in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s cabinet will meet tonight to consider Hamas’s proposal, in which, according to media close to the organization, Islamists would be “more flexible” in negotiating clauses 8 and 14 of the draft agreement proposed by Israel and announced by the United States last May 31st.

Clause 8 concerns the negotiations that both parties will have to carry out during the first phase of the agreement, lasting six weeks, while Clause 14 refers to the transition from the first phase to the second.

In this first stage, a complete ceasefire would be established, in which Israel would withdraw its troops from Gaza and an exchange of hostages would be carried out (giving priority to women, the elderly and children) in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

During the six weeks, Israel and Hamas would have to negotiate the transition to a second phase that would involve a permanent ceasefire, an indispensable requirement for the Islamists and an impossibility for Netanyahu until the organization is eliminated.

As talks progress, Gaza crossed the threshold of 38,000 dead on Thursday, most of them women and children, after 58 Palestinians lost their lives and 179 were injured in the last day, according to the Ministry of Health of the enclave, controlled by Hamas.

The Israeli army has continued its attacks on Gaza City, where it has carried out a ground incursion into the Shujaiya neighbourhood, from which some 85,000 people have had to flee, according to the United Nations.

Two schools run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) were also bombed in the capital on Thursday, killing five people in one of them.

“They were used as hideouts for Hamas terrorists,” the military statement said, adding that militants planned and carried out attacks against troops from there.