US-brokered negotiations between Hamas and Israel on the implementation of President Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan began on Monday in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh, sources told The National.
They said the negotiations will focus on the technicalities of the release of the hostages held by Hamas, as well as the details and maps pertaining to Israel's initial military redeployment in Gaza to allow the handover process to proceed.
Mediators from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey will also be asking during negotiations for a US guarantee that Israel will continue to observe a ceasefire in Gaza after Hamas hands over the hostages as part of the 20-point plan presented by Mr Trump last week, they said.
They said the mediators – three US allies with close links to Hamas – backed Hamas's request that Israel must observe the truce throughout the negotiations and until a long-term ceasefire is reached.
Hamas, moreover, wants guarantees that the long-term ceasefire will become permanent once a comprehensive deal with Israel is reached, said the sources.
The hostages – 20 of 48 are alive – are Hamas's only bargaining chip. The militant group fears that Israel might be reluctant to continue to observe the truce or withdraw its troops from Gaza after the hostages had been freed.
Hamas's concern is a reflection of the significant weakening of its military capabilities and manpower after two years of relentless Israeli strikes and the loss of some of the popular support it once enjoyed in Gaza, due to the high death toll in the enclave, where more than 66,000 of mostly civilian Palestinians have been killed, and the widespread hunger gripping the coastal territory.
The sources said Hamas intended to free all 20 living hostages at once, but requested that it be given more time to hand over the remains of the other hostages because it would take time to locate and exhume their bodies, which had been buried in tunnels that had been destroyed by Israeli attacks.
Hamas, they said, was also insisting in the face of Israeli opposition that the hundreds of Palestinians to be freed from Israeli prisons in exchange for the 48 hostages include high-profile Palestinians like Marwan Al Barghouthi and Ahmed Saadat – both stalwarts of the mainstream Fatah faction – and Ibrahim Hamed of Hamas's military wing.
Hamas, said the sources, also wanted a timeline for Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and was seeking amendments to maps of Israeli deployment in Gaza after a ceasefire is declared. They had no details.
The US and Israel are determined that Hamas must fully disarm as provided for in Mr Trump's plans. However, Hamas, said the sources, has suggested that it only gives up its offensive weapons, like missile batteries, rocket launchers, and rocket propelled grenades, with the disposition of the rest of the group's arsenal decided as part of inter-Palestinian reconciliation.
The offensive weapons, according to Hamas, should be kept in safekeeping by neighbouring Egypt, said the sources.
Mr Trump on Sunday described his peace proposal for Gaza, which was first announced last week, as a “great deal for everybody”. He separately warned Hamas it could face “complete obliteration” if it tried to hold on to power in Gaza.
Israel's top soldier, Gen Eyal Zamir, has, meanwhile, said that troops “will return to fighting” in Gaza if talks fail. Israel claimed to have eased its bombardment because of a “change in the operational situation”, although Palestinian officials reported dozens more deaths over the weekend.
Hamas, said the sources, wants all Israeli military activities in Gaza, including reconnaissance flights, to be suspended during the process of handing over the hostages.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Washington on Sunday that Hamas has agreed in principle to what happens after the war ends, but cautioned that negotiating the disarmament of Hamas will be “hard”.
“We will know very quickly whether Hamas is serious or not by how these technical talks go in terms of the logistics,” Mr Rubio told NBC News about the release of hostages from Gaza.
The negotiations in Egypt followed Hamas's decision on Friday to agree to releasing all the hostages and accepting the key parts of Mr Trump's plan.
The White House said Mr Trump will send two envoys to Egypt – his son-in-law and former adviser Jared Kushner and special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. The senior Hamas officials taking part in the negotiations are Khalil Al Hayya, Moussa Abu Marzouk, Ghazi Hamad and Muhammad Darwish.
A senior Israeli negotiating team led by Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer arrived in Sharm El Sheikh on Monday, the sources said.
Mr Witkoff and Mr Kushner are scheduled to join them later this week, but only if sufficient progress has been made by then.
On Saturday, the US President sought to pile more pressure on Hamas to act quickly, saying he would “not tolerate delay” from the group. He warned Hamas to move quickly towards a deal “or else all bets will be off”.
He said on Truth Social that Israel had agreed to an initial line of withdrawal in Gaza and that this had been shared with Hamas.
“When Hamas confirms, the ceasefire will be immediately effective, the hostages and prisoner exchange will begin, and we will create the conditions for the next phase of withdrawal,” he wrote alongside a map of the proposed line.
Under Mr Trump's plan, Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza will be excluded from the governance of postwar Gaza and the reconstruction of the enclave.
Significantly, it explicitly states that the enclave's residents would not be thrown out of the enclave to make way for the construction of a glitzy resort and that Israel will not be allowed to annex Gaza or the occupied West Bank.
Under the proposal, the administration of the territory would be taken up by a technocratic and non-partisan panel of Palestinians and overseen by a transitional authority led by Mr Trump.
The Gaza war was triggered by Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people. Israel's military response was a relentless campaign that has to date killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, Gaza's health authorities said.
Israel's military conduct in Gaza has given rise to charges of genocide, which it denies. Its use of food as a weapon has left hundreds of thousands in Gaza in famine and, according to the UN last month.
