Tel Aviv — Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for hostages and missing persons, has extended a ceasefire offer from the Israeli government to Hamas leader Yahyah Sinwar.
“I think we can provide safe passage for him, his family, and whoever he wants to bring with him. If (he) wants to bring 10, bring 10. Thousands! I don’t care,” Hirsch told CBS News.
In return, Hamas should give up control of the Gaza Strip and allow the return of the remaining 101 hostages, he said.
“It would mean the end of the war, because (the hostages) would then be recovered,” Hirsch said.
Of the remaining 101 hostages currently held by Hamas, Israeli intelligence believes 64 are still alive. Israel insists that both the living and the dead must be returned.
Sinwar has not responded to Hirsch’s proposal since the Israeli negotiator first presented a more limited version of it last week.
The Hamas leader has been in hiding, believed to be somewhere in the maze of tunnels beneath Gaza, since the group launched its October 7 terror attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people, taking about 250 hostage and creating an ongoing terror threat. war in Gaza.
Israeli officials say Sinwar was last seen in a video they say was taken from a Hamas security camera several days after the Oct. 7 massacre. The grainy black-and-white photos show him only from behind, following his wife and children into a tunnel.
Sinwar was appointed leader of Hamas on August 6, about a week after Israel assassinated the group’s longtime political leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital Tehran.
Sinwar issued a public message this week thanking his Houthi allies in Yemen after one of their rockets hit Israel on Sunday. There was no suggestion in his message that he was open to accepting an Israeli offer of safe passage out of Gaza. Rather, he indicated that his group, with the help of the Houthis and Hamas’ powerful Hezbollah allies in Lebanon, was ready to hold out for an eventual victory over Israel.
“We have prepared ourselves for a prolonged war of attrition that will break the political will of the enemy,” he said.
Hirsch also indicated in his interview with CBS News that there could be some room for wiggle room in one of Israel’s key conditions for a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was accused by Hamas of suddenly introducing a new term into the negotiations. He allegedly moved a goalpost in the long-running dialogue by insisting that Israeli troops remain in the Philadelphia Corridor, the area along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, after the war to ensure that Hamas could not smuggle weapons into the Palestinian territory.
For Hamas, a continued Israeli military presence in Gaza has always been a non-starting point in the negotiations.
Hirsch has now indicated that there is room for compromise.
“I’m dealing with the hostages and the missing,” he said. “The road to Philadelphia is a very important tool for negotiations.”
Several senior Israeli military officials believe that monitoring of the alleged smuggling route could be done electronically, with help from international partners, but without Israeli troops on the ground.
Asked whether Israel could rely on underground sensors instead of troops to detect contraband, Hirsch said the details of the IDF deployment – which troops are stationed where – “are part of the negotiations.”
“The road to Philadelphia, the prisoners in Israeli prisons, humanitarian aid: these are all means through which we can negotiate to bring our hostages home,” he said.
Widow of man killed in Baltimore bridge collapse speaks out, calls for better safety measures
What You Need to Know About the Arrest of Sean “Diddy” Combs
