“The proposed deal from the Israelis through Witkoff is extremely difficult to accept,” said a senior Hamas official to Drop Site. “There is no talk about the [ceasefire] deal from January 19. There is no talk about a return to the situation before March 2” when Israel abandoned the original ceasefire. The Hamas official said that there is no guarantee Israel would even respect the 60-day truce after its ten captives are returned in the first week of the deal. “They might launch the war again,” he said. “There are no guarantees to a permanent ceasefire, no guarantees for a permanent withdrawal.”
On Thursday, a senior Palestinian resistance figure told Drop Site that Hamas is still debating the language in the draft. He pointed out that the assurances about Trump’s commitment to a long-term ceasefire are not enforceable and that Israel repeatedly violates ceasefire agreements, including the January deal that Trump pushed through before his inauguration. "Releasing half [of the living Israeli captives] within a week and then putting your hopes in Trump is not very reassuring,” he told Drop Site.
Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told Drop Site earlier this month that the group had received a direct commitment from Witkoff that two days after the release of U.S. citizen and Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, the Trump administration would compel Israel to lift the Gaza blockade and allow humanitarian aid to enter the territory. Witkoff, according to Naim, also promised that Trump would make a public call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for negotiations aimed at achieving a “permanent ceasefire.”
“He did nothing of this,” Naim said. “They didn’t violate the deal. They threw it in the trash.”
“There are a lot of reservations on this paper as a framework. There are a lot of loopholes. There are a lot of ambiguities,” a Palestinian source close to the negotiating team told Drop Site. “Israel will never agree to end the war under this framework. The number of aid trucks are not mentioned. There are no specifics about where the Israeli forces will withdraw to. All of these are problems which will probably impede this. Witkoff tried to accommodate Israel much more than what was in the earlier paper. It’s going to take some time before a deal gets approved by the movement.”
With this ‘deal’ Israel would no doubt continue it’s genocidal campaign after 7 days once the hostages are out. And once they are, they would certainly ramp it up even more than the current death and starvation campaign is