Hamas officials, Khalil Al-Hayya and Osama Hamdan, attend a press conference in Beirut, Lebanon, November 21, 2023. (Photo: REUTERS/Esa Alexander/File Photo)
Mossad Director David Barnea offered Hamas terrorists safe passage from Gaza to another country in exchange for the release of the hostages and the laying down of arms, but was refused, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
The proposal was made during a meeting with Egyptian officials and mediators last week, but Hamas immediately rejected it.
The top ceasefire negotiator for Hamas, Khalil al-Hayya, vowed that the terror group “could continue fighting for months, if not years,” according to the Egyptian mediators.
Ophir Falk, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign policy advisor, said Israel will “hunt down” those who hurt the hostages.
Israel “has reiterated that we are willing to give them safe passage if they lay down their arms and release the hostages. At the same time, anyone who will hurt the hostages will be hunted down,” Falk said.
According to the Qatari newspaper Al-Araby al-Jadeed, al-Hayya stated there would have to be an end to the “genocide” that Hamas claims Israel is committing in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, as a precondition for any sort of negotiations about the hostages.
Free passage in exchange for the hostages is an made to that Israel has offered Hamas leadership since the early days of the war last October 2023.
In January, Barnea offered the top Hamas leaders in Gaza – Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif – free passage out of Gaza in return for the hostages. The proposal was rejected.
Since then, the Israel Defense Forces eliminated Deif in an airstrike on a Hamas compound near Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip on July 13. Sinwar, the main architect of the Oct. 7 massacre was killed by the IDF in Rafah in southern Gaza earlier this month.
Despite resistance from Hamas officials, Israel is continuing efforts to reach a hostage deal.
Barnea is scheduled to participate in a summit in Doha on Sunday to discuss various options with the reported participation of the head of Mossad, Ronen Bar, Qatari Prime Minister Al-Thani, the new head of Egyptian intelligence Hassan Rashad, and CIA Director William Burns.
“We’re engaged with them [Hamas]. We had some meetings with them the last couple of days. We will discuss the means to achieve a breakthrough in these negotiations,” said Al-Thani at a press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Doha on Thursday.
“We talked about options to capitalize on this moment and next steps to move the process forward, and I anticipate that our negotiators will be getting together in the coming days,” Blinken said . “We haven’t yet really determined whether Hamas is prepared to engage, but the next step is getting the negotiators together… we’ll certainly learn more in the coming days.”
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said the meeting on Sunday will cover “various options for starting the negotiations for the release of the hostages from Hamas captivity of Hamas, against the background of the latest developments.”
The meeting in Doha is the first high-level session of negotiations in almost two months.
Earlier this month, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said the Hamas leadership had refused to take part in ceasefire negotiations for weeks. The terror group’s most recent proposal came in July and contained the same demands it has insisted upon since the initial hostage release and truce deal in November of last year.