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Hamas has said it remains committed to a ceasefire deal with Israel in Gaza and will continue freeing Israeli hostages from the enclave as set out in the agreement.
The announcement appeared to reverse a threat by the Palestinian militant group this week to suspend releases of hostages “until further notice”. In response, Israel had threatened to resume the 16-month-old war if the next group of hostages were not freed as scheduled on Saturday.
Hamas justified the threatened suspension by accusing Israel of various breaches of the ceasefire agreement, including not allowing the agreed amounts of humanitarian aid — in particular tents and shelters — into Gaza, most of which has been reduced to ruins by Israel’s offensive.
But after talks with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, Hamas said on Thursday that it had received assurances that they would address the “obstacles” to the deal and “close any gaps” in its implementation.
“Accordingly, Hamas confirms its continued position to implement the agreement in accordance with what was signed, including the exchange of prisoners according to the specified timetable,” the group said.
Shortly after Hamas’s announcement, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied a report by Al Jazeera that lorries loaded with heavy equipment and mobile homes were queueing to enter Gaza from Egypt as “fake news”.
“There is no entry of caravans or heavy equipment into the Gaza Strip, and there is no co-ordination for this,” Omer Dostri, Netanyahu’s spokesman, wrote on X.
Hamas is due to free three Israeli hostages in return for dozens of Palestinian prisoners on Saturday in what would be the sixth exchange of a fragile, three-stage deal thrashed out by mediators earlier this year.
Under the terms of the first stage of the deal, Hamas is due to release 33 Israeli hostages, including all children, women and men over 50, in exchange for the release of about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.
By last Saturday, it had released 16 Israeli hostages in return for the release of more than 700 Palestinian prisoners. It also freed five Thai workers whom it seized during its October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the war.
The second stage, in which Hamas is meant to release all the remaining living hostages — in exchange for hundreds more Palestinian prisoners, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a permanent end to the fighting — is due to begin in March.
However, the details have yet to be negotiated and Netanyahu, who is under pressure from far-right ministers to resume the war when the first stage ends, said last week that he would continue the fighting until Hamas was destroyed, casting doubt on the viability of the second phase.
The prospects of a longer-term truce have also been thrown into question by US President Donald Trump’s insistence that he wants the US to take over Gaza and resettle the Palestinian enclave’s population of more than 2mn people in other countries, including Egypt and Jordan.
The idea has been vehemently rejected by Palestinians, the Arab world and much of the international community.
In a sign of the tensions around the deal, Egypt on Thursday issued a list of alleged breaches of the deal by Israel and accused it of giving the impression that it “does not want to continue the ceasefire agreement and wants to implement Trump’s displacement plan”.
Attributed to an “informed Egyptian source”, the list includes a range of breaches such as flights over Gaza during prohibited hours, forbidding fishermen from entering the sea and firing at them, and opening fire at Gazans outside buffer zones, killing 22 people and injuring 59.
The statement also criticised Israel’s delay in starting second-phase negotiations and leaking “impossible conditions that cannot be accepted”.
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