The militant group Hamas said Thursday that he was ready to begin conversations in the second phase of a high fire in Gaza after several hundred Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons during the night in exchange for the bodies of four Israeli hostages.
In a statement early Thursday, the office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he had ordered that a delegation of negotiators were sent to Cairo, Egypt, the same day to continue the conversations.
It was the final exchange of the first six -week phase of a high fire that entered into force on January 19 in the War in Gaza.
The conversations have not yet begun in a second phase, destined to take a permanent end of the war that began in October 2023 when the fighters led by Hamas broke into the Israeli cities and Israel responded with an assault assault that has devastated the enclave.
Hamas said Thursday that the only way in which the remaining hostages would be released in Gaza is through the commitment to the high fire.
“We renew our total commitment to the high fire agreement and confirm our preparation to hold negotiations for the second phase of the agreement,” the group said in a statement.
Israeli energy minister Eli Cohen said that returning to the remaining 59 hostages was a priority, but there will be no agreement in the second stage of the high fire if Hamas is intact in Gaza.
“Our demands are clear,” said Cohen, a member of the Security Cabinet, to the Kan public broadcaster.
Cohen said that Israel was in a stronger position to negotiate now that on the eve of the high fire because it has a total support of the US administration of President Donald Trump, that this month began to send heavy bombs.
The Egyptian mediators said on Wednesday the delivery of the bodies of the final hostages in the first phase of the agreement, in exchange for 620 Palestinians arrested by the Israeli forces in Gaza or imprisoned in Israel.
Israel had previously refused to release prisoners on Saturday after Hamas delivered six hostages in a staged ceremony.
Hamas had been showing live hostages and coffins with hostage remains on stage in front of a crowd in Gaza before delivering them, to strong criticisms, including the United Nations.
The final delivery did not include such a ceremony.
Israel received coffins that carried the remains of the four hostages, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netyahu’s office in the early hours of Thursday.
President Isaac Herzog in a position in X confirmed the bodies such as those of Tsachi Idan, Itzhak Elgrat, Ohad Yahalomi and Shlomo Mantzur, all of which were kidnapped during the attack of October 7, 2023 from their homes of Kibbutz near Gaza.
“In this difficult time, there is some comfort in the fact that they will be buried in Israel’s tomb,” he wrote.
Hamas took 251 hostages and killed some 1,200 people in their October raid in the communities of southern Israel, according to Israel.
At least 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent assault of Israel to Gaza, the Palestinian authorities say. The war has brought the waste to the coastal enclave full of people and displaced most of its population several times.
The Palestinians released during the night include 445 men and 24 women and children arrested in Gaza, as well as 151 prisoners who fulfill life imprisonment for mortal attacks against the Israelis, according to a source of Hamas.
A bus transported to the detainees of the Israel Operation prison in the West Bank occupied to Ramallah, where the crowd titizers had gathered to greet them.
The released prisoner Yassin, 42, told Reuters that he had been in Israeli detention for 20 years.
“Our sacrifices and imprisonment were not in vain,” said Yassin. “We had confidence in the [Palestinian] endurance.”
Almost 100 Palestinian prisoners were delivered to Egypt, where they will stay until another country accepts them, according to a source of Hamas and the Egyptian media.
