Hamas said it will release Israeli hostages as initially planned after holding \u201cpositive\u201d talks with mediators, following a dispute with Israel over the Gaza ceasefire deal. <\/p>\n
The militant group had postponed the release of more hostages this weekend, accusing Israel of violating the fragile ceasefire. In response, Israel warned it would return to fighting. <\/p>\n
After talks with key mediators Egypt and Qatar, Hamas said that the releases \u2013 which will see Palestinian prisoners exchanged in return \u2013 will go ahead. <\/p>\n
\u201cHamas confirms its continued position to implement the deal according to what was signed, which includes exchanging prisoners according to the specified timetable,\u201d a statement by the militant group said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe talks were characterized by a positive spirit,\u201d the statement said, adding that Egypt and Qatar affirmed they would work to \u201cremove obstacles and fill gaps.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israel has not responded to Hamas\u2019 statement. <\/p>\n
It is unclear yet whether Hamas\u2019 announcement will be enough to resolve the dispute with Israel. The standoff had threatened the first pause in fighting in over a year, and the next phase of the ceasefire has yet to be determined. <\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump has suggested dismissing the multi-staged approach of the deal altogether and giving Hamas an ultimatum to release all the hostages at once. <\/p>\n
While Netanyahu welcomed Trump\u2019s demand, he hasn\u2019t explicitly agreed to it \u2013 instead issuing an ambiguous statement, saying Hamas must \u201creturn our hostages by Saturday noon\u201d \u2013 without giving a figure \u2013 or the military \u201cwill return to intense fighting until Hamas is completely defeated.\u201d <\/p>\n
So far, 16 out of 33 Israeli hostages scheduled for release in the current phase of the agreement have been freed by Hamas, and 656 Palestinian prisoners from a list of nearly 2,000 have been released by Israel. <\/p>\n
In its statement on Thursday, Hamas said mediators pledged to follow up on its demands for Israel to allow the entry of housing supplies, medical equipment, fuel, and relief aid. The group also said mediators confirmed they would \u201cremove obstacles\u201d to resuming the ceasefire agreement. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Hamas said it will release Israeli hostages as initially planned after holding \u201cpositive\u201d talks with mediators, following a dispute with Israel over the Gaza ceasefire deal. The militant group had postponed the release of more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3800,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}