Hamas stands by hostage release terms as Trump pushes for deal by Jan. 20 – National

Hamas stood by its demand on Tuesday Israel completely end his attack on Gaza under any deal to release hostages, said US President-elect Donald Trump was rash to say “all hell will break loose” unless they go free by his January 20 inauguration.

Officials from the Islamist group and Israel have been holding talks with Qatari and Egyptian mediators for months in the most intensive effort to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and secure the release of 100 hostages who remain trapped in Gaza.

The outgoing US administration has called for a final push for a deal before Joe Biden leaves office, and many in the region now see Trump’s inauguration as an unofficial deadline.

“If (the hostages are) not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break loose in the Middle East,” Trump said Tuesday at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

“It’s not going to be good for Hamas, and it’s not going to be good, frankly, for anybody.”

Trump is sending his incoming special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, to Qatar this week for additional talks. Witkoff said real progress has been made.

“The red lines that he put out there — that’s what drives this negotiation,” Witkoff told reporters while standing next to Trump.

But with the clock ticking, both sides accuse the other of blocking a deal by sticking to terms that torpedoed all previous peace efforts for more than a year.

Hamas says it will free its remaining hostages only if Israel agrees to end its military offensive and withdraw all its troops from Gaza. Israel says it will not end its attack until Hamas is dismantled and all hostages are free.

“Hamas is the only obstacle to the release of the hostages,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry Director General Eden Bar Tal told a briefing with reporters, saying Israel was fully committed to reaching a deal.

Hamas official Osama Hamdan, who held a press conference in Algiers, said Israel was to blame for undermining all efforts to reach a deal.

While he said he would not give details about the latest round of negotiations, he reiterated the Hamas conditions of “a complete end to the aggression and a complete withdrawal from countries that invade the occupation.”

Commenting on Trump’s threat that there would be “hell” to pay unless all the hostages were released before the inauguration, Hamdan said: “I think the American president needs to make more disciplined and diplomatic statements.”

Israel has sent a team of mid-range officials to Qatar for talks mediated by Qatari and Egyptian mediators. Some Arab media reports said that David Barnea, the head of Mossad, who led negotiations, was expected to participate. The office of the Israeli prime minister has no comment.

In one notable step toward a deal, a Hamas official told Reuters on Sunday that the group had cleared an Israeli-submitted list of 34 hostages who could be freed in the first phase of a ceasefire, in addition to Palestinian prisoners held by Israel to be kept.

The list included female Israeli soldiers, plus elderly, female and minor civilians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel had so far received no confirmation as to whether those on his list were still alive.

Nearly 46,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s attack on Gaza, according to Hamas health officials in the enclave. The attack was launched after Hamas fighters stormed Israeli territory in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli counts.

Israeli military strikes killed at least 24 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, medics said, as the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory urged international donors to immediately provide fuel to run generators and maintain medical services.

One of those strikes killed four people in a house in Gaza City and six were killed in separate strikes across the enclave, medics said.

Later on Tuesday, an Israeli strike on a tent in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip killed four children and eight Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Jabalia in the north, medics said.

In addition, an Israeli strike on a vehicle in Khan Younis killed two people, medics and civil relief officials said.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those attacks.

It said that 240 Palestinians who had been detained by its forces in a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza last month had provided “substantial intelligence.”

The military released footage of the interrogation of an alleged Hamas militant detailing how militants “operated from the hospital area” and transferred weapons to and from.

Hamas and the Gaza Ministry of Health deny any armed presence in the hospital.

– With additional files from the Associated Press