JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday Israel was ready to proceed to the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, as long as Hamas was ready to release more of the 59 hostages it is still holding.
Fighting in Gaza has been halted since January 19 under a truce arranged with U.S. support and Qatari and Egyptian mediators, and Hamas has exchanged 33 Israeli hostages and five Thais for some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
But the initial 42-day truce has expired and Hamas and Israel, which has blocked the entry of aid trucks into Gaza, remain far apart on broader issues including the postwar governance of Gaza and the future of Hamas itself.
“We are ready to continue to phase two,” Saar told reporters in Jerusalem as Arab leaders prepared to meet in Cairo to discuss a plan for ending the war permanently.
“But in order to extend the time or the framework, we need an agreement to release more hostages.”
Hamas says it wants to move ahead to the second phase negotiations that could open the way to a permanent end to the war with the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the devastated Palestinian enclave and a return of the remaining 59 hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023.
But Israel says its hostages must be handed over for the truce to be extended and backs a plan to extend the ceasefire during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began on Saturday, until after the Jewish Passover holiday in April.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s special Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff is due to visit the region in the next few days to discuss extending the ceasefire or moving ahead of phase two, the State Department said on Monday.
Saar denied that Israel had breached the agreement by not moving ahead to stage two negotiations. He said there was “no automaticity” between the stages and he said Hamas had itself violated the agreement to allow aid into Gaza by seizing most of the supplies itself.
“It is a means to continue the war against Israel. It’s today the major part of Hamas income in Gaza,” he said.
Aid groups have said that looting and wrongful seizure of aid trucks into Gaza has been a major problem but Hamas, the Islamist militant group that seized power in Gaza in 2007, denies seizing aid for its own members.
Saar declined to comment on an Israeli media report that Israel had set a 10-day deadline to reach an agreement or resume fighting, but said: “If we want to do it, we will do it.”
(Reporting by James Mackenzie; editing by Timothy Heritage and Mark Heinrich)
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