Yayha Sinwar, the Gaza-based leader of Hamas, has reportedly rejected any ceasefire that would require the terror group to disarm, according to the Wall Street Journal — making a new hostage deal almost impossible.
The Journal reported Thursday:
Hamas’s leader in Gaza told Arab negotiators that he would accept a peace deal only if Israel commits to a permanent cease-fire, affirming the militant group’s position in his first response to a proposal introduced by President Biden to end the eight-month war.
“Hamas will not surrender its guns or sign a proposal that asks for that,” Arab mediators said Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar told them in a brief message they received Thursday, as two top U.S. officials, including Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns, hold talks in the region aimed at jump-starting long-stalled negotiations.
The Hamas response could be interpreted as a rejection of Biden’s proposal. In fact, however, it neatly splits the difference between the American proposal (which falsely claimed to be Israel’s proposal) and the actual Israeli proposal, which is that no ceasefire is acceptable that allows Hamas to retain military and governing capability.
The proposal presented by U.S. President Joe Biden barely mentioned Hamas, and did not require disarmament.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Biden’s version of the proposal was only “partial,” and that Israel would not accept a permanent ceasefire that left Hamas with weapons, able to rule Gaza and threaten Israel.
The Biden administration openly admitted that its proposal was almost “identical” to Hamas’s negotiating demands.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
