Hamas Suspends Truce Negotiations After Assassination Attempt on Deif
The Palestinian president holds Hamas responsible for the ongoing war in Gaza.
The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has decided to suspend the negotiations mediated by Doha and Cairo and supported by Washington to halt the fire in Gaza, according to a senior official in the movement. This appears to be a response to the assassination attempt on Mohammed Deif, the commander of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, in an attack that killed and injured dozens of Palestinians. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held the movement responsible for the continuation of the war, in the latest sign of escalating disputes between the Fatah and Hamas movements.
A Hamas leader said, “The head of the political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, informed the mediators and some regional parties during a series of calls and phone conversations about the decision to suspend the negotiations due to the occupation’s lack of seriousness, continuous stalling and blocking policy, and massacres committed against unarmed civilians.”
Hamas‘s decision comes as Israeli radio ‘Kan’ reported on Saturday that Mossad chief David Barnea will travel in the coming days to the Qatari capital, Doha, for another round of talks to release the detainees.
Before Hamas‘s decision to suspend negotiations, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that it did not appear that the plans for indirect negotiations mediated by Doha, Cairo, and the United States had been canceled due to the latest Israeli attempt to assassinate Mohammed Deif in an airstrike.
At least 90 people were killed and hundreds injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. At least 300 people were injured in the attack on the Muwassi camp when the tents of the displaced were targeted. Medical sources in the Gaza Strip reported that many of them were seriously injured and face the risk of death.
A few hours earlier, the Israeli army bombed a fenced site in the humanitarian area between Khan Younis and Muwassi, which Israel claimed was used as a base by Hamas militants.
Truce and Israeli hostage negotiations have been stalled for months as mediators seek to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and an exchange of the remaining detainees held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stated that Israel and the United States were responsible for the attack on the Muwassi area in the Gaza Strip on Saturday. Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), supported by the West, also held Hamas responsible for the ongoing war in the sector.
His statements indicate escalating tensions between the Fatah movement he leads and Hamas, which accused the Palestinian president of siding with Israel.
Israel said that the Muwassi attack aimed to kill the Hamas military wing leader Mohammed Deif and his assistant. Khalil al-Hayya, deputy head of Hamas in Gaza, denied to Al-Jazeera the death of Deif, adding, “We say to Netanyahu that Mohammed Deif hears you now and mocks your false statements.”
Abu Mazen said in a statement published by his office, “The Palestinian presidency condemns this massacre and holds the Israeli government fully responsible, as well as the American administration that provides all kinds of support to the occupation and its crimes.”
However, Abbas, whose authority retains limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, also held Hamas partially responsible. The latest war, ongoing for nine months in Gaza, broke out after the Palestinian movement attacked southern Israel on October 7.
A statement from the Palestinian presidency said, “The presidency considers Hamas, by evading national unity and providing free excuses to the occupying state, a partner in bearing the legal, moral, and political responsibility for the continuation of the Israeli war of extermination in the Gaza Strip, with all the suffering, destruction, and killing it causes to our people.”
Hamas has run the Gaza Strip since it took control from Abbas loyalists in 2007.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official who has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, said, “These statements mean that the Authority has chosen to side with the occupation and contribute to the pressures exerted against the resistance,” adding, “This behavior will not succeed in extorting or pressuring the resistance.”
Arab mediation efforts led by Egypt have so far failed to reconcile the two sides.
Bassem Naim, a Hamas leader who participated in previous reconciliation talks with Fatah, said that Abbas is responsible for the failure to reach a unity agreement, adding that his statements “turn the Authority and its presidency into partners with the Zionist enemy in the crimes committed against our people, not only in Gaza but throughout the Palestinian territories.”
