Hamas agrees to release all Israeli hostages, pending conditions

Hamas says it agreed to release all Israeli, living or dead hostages, as long as “the field conditions for the exchange are met” and expressed the desire to negotiate through mediators in terms of President Donald Trump for peace in the Middle East.

On Friday, in their statement, Hamas said that the group “said its desire to immediately conclude negotiations through mediators to discuss the details of this agreement.”

“The movement also renews its agreement to give the administration of the Gaza Strip to a Palestinian independent corpus (technocrats), based on Palestinian national consensus and Arab and Islamic support,” said Hamas.

Hamas responded to a 20 -point peace plan that Trump described in the White House on Monday alongside the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump responded positively to the answer in a post on Truth Social.

“Based on the declaration which has just published by Hamas, I think they are ready for lasting peace. Israel must immediately stop the bombardment of Gaza, so that we can take out the hostages safely and quickly! At the moment, it is far too dangerous to do so. We are already in discussions on details,” he wrote.

Earlier Friday, Trump said Hamas had until 6 p.m. Sunday to accept the cease-fire proposal.

“If this last chance agreement is not concluded, all hell, as no one has ever seen before, will separate against Hamas,” wrote Trump in a long post on social social.

Hamas also said on Friday that he wanted to discuss more other elements of the peace plan.

“The other questions mentioned in the proposal of President Trump concerning the future of the Gaza Strip and the inherent rights of the Palestinian people are linked to a complete national position based on relevant international laws and resolutions,” said the group. “They must be discussed in a complete Palestinian national framework. Hamas will be part of it and will contribute to it with full responsibility.”

Under the plan, the attack from Israel to Gaza would end immediately once the two parties have accepted the proposal, with all the hostages, alive and dead, which will be released within 72 hours. The plan says that no one will be forced to leave Gaza and those who do it can come back.

A path to self -determination and the Palestinian state are described as a possible result, but not as a guarantee.

By agreeing to give the administration of the Gaza Strip to an independent body of technocrats, Hamas seems to have accepted one of the key points of Trump’s plan to renounce control, but it is still not clear if they will accept to “have no role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly or in any form whatsoever”, as the plan stipulates.

Hamas’ response does not deal with a single critical point: disarmament. Trump’s plan stipulates that Hamas must accept “a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include the implementation of weapons beyond use through a process agreed to downgrade”. It will probably be one of the main collage points if the negotiations take place.

Hamas’ response comes when the Israeli army continued with a ground operation in the city of Gaza struck by famine, despite the assembly of international pressure and isolation on its attack on the devastated Palestinian enclave.

UN Secretary General António Guterres praised Hamas’s response, according to his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.

“”[Guterres] Urge all the parties to seize the opportunity to end the tragic conflict in Gaza, “Dujarric said in a press release.

If the agreement is concluded, it would so far represent the clearest victory of the foreign policy of the second mandate of Trump – the brokerage of a peace agreement which turned out to be too elusive for his predecessor, President Joe Biden, and that he promised that he would deliver quickly as he campaigned for the oval office in 2024.

During this race, Trump underlined a deep flaw in the Democratic Party during the war which opposed moderate pro-Israel against the liberal defenders of the Palestinians. Although Trump’s attention on the aid to negotiate a permanent ceasefire has targeted and declined during his eight months and more, the conflict has never been out of his radar.

He allocated one of his closest allies, his real estate colleague, Steve Witkoff, in the quarter-cross of the American competition team, and he put his own capital at stake with the main players in the region as recently as this week.

The former president of the Newt Gingrich Chamber, a long-standing informal advisor of Trump, said on Friday in an interview with NBC News that the president held a vision of the Middle East which has included progress for the Israel and Arab nations since he took office in 2017 and that his insistence on the dispute of his point of view of Netanyahu for Israeli strikes in Qatar This view.

“What you see is, first of all, a very subtle complex of complex relationships that fed on the president with a continuous accent on a better future,” said Gingrich. If a peace agreement “actually occurs”, added Gingrich, it could put Trump in the league with President Theodore Roosevelt, who negotiated the end of the Russian-Japanese war at the beginning of the 20th century, and that “would have a substantial impact” on Trump’s perception in the United States

A main Arab diplomat told NBC News that Hamas’ response was “positive”, adding: “They had no choice but to accept”.

But a former Western diplomat with experience in the region told NBC News that the plan could still collapse.

“This is perhaps the start of the end, but there is even more work to do. Hamas has not accepted key elements of the plan or the deadline for hostage versions,” said the diplomat. “Trump’s call on Israel to arrest strikes will call Hamas’ bluff in the coming days. It is now in Hamas. We see either hostages coming out this week or war will restart.”

Trump’s peace plan encountered careful optimism earlier in the week by leaders elsewhere in the Middle East and worldwide.

The Palestinian authority, which partially controls the occupied West Bank, congratulated Trump for his “sincere and tireless efforts” to “end the war against Gaza” and reiterated his commitment to reforms that could open the way to a future Palestinian state.

Muslim powers, notably Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey, praised the plan in a joint declaration qualifying the efforts of “sincere”.

The proposal also received support from Europe, countries that had recently challenged Washington by officially recognizing the Palestinian State hosting the initiative.

But a few hours after Trump announced the plan, Netanyahu reiterated his past wishes to oppose the Palestinian state.

“Instead that Hamas isolates us, we have turned the tables and isolated Hamas,” he said in Hebrew in a video talking about his American trip.

The developments come on the eve of the second anniversary of the fighting, which started after the terrorist attacks led by Hamas on October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and around 250 were taken hostage.

According to the Enclave health officials, Israeli forces have killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in the past two years.