Hamas replies positively to Gaza ceasefire proposal

Nidal al-Mughrabi and Alexander Cornwell | July 5, 2025

Hamas has responded in “a positive spirit” to a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire proposal and is prepared to enter into talks on implementing the deal, which envisages a release of hostages and negotiations on ending the conflict.

US President Donald Trump had announced a “final proposal” for a 60-day ceasefire in the nearly 21-month-old war between Israel and Hamas, saying he anticipated a reply from the parties in coming hours.

Hamas wrote on its official website: “The Hamas movement has completed its internal consultations as well as discussions with Palestinian factions and forces regarding the latest proposal by the mediators to halt the aggression against our people in Gaza.

“The movement has delivered its response to the brotherly mediators, which was characterised by a positive spirit. Hamas is fully prepared, with all seriousness, to immediately enter a new round of negotiations on the mechanism for implementing this framework,” said the statement posted on Friday.

In a sign of potential challenges still facing the sides, a Palestinian official of a militant group allied with Hamas said concerns remained over humanitarian aid, passage through the Rafah crossing to Egypt and clarity over a timetable of Israeli troop withdrawals.

Trump said on Tuesday that Israel had agreed “to the necessary conditions to finalise” a 60-day ceasefire, during which efforts would be made to end the US ally’s war in the Palestinian enclave.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is due to meet Trump in Washington on Monday, has yet to comment on Trump’s announcement, and in their public statements the two sides remain far apart.

Netanyahu has repeatedly said Hamas must be disarmed, a position the militant group, which is thought to be holding 20 living hostages, has refused to discuss.

Israeli media cited an Israeli official as saying that Israel had received and was looking into Hamas’ response to the ceasefire proposal.

Trump expressed optimism late on Friday to reporters aboard Air Force One, who asked about Hamas’s response.

“They said they gave me a positive response? Well, that’s good,” Trump said, adding he had not yet been briefed.

“There could be a Gaza deal next week.”

An Egyptian security official told Reuters that Egypt, which along with Qatar is mediating ceasefire efforts, said Hamas’s response “includes positive signs that an agreement is near, but there are some demands from Hamas that need to be worked on”.

Israeli attacks had killed at least 138 Palestinians in Gaza in the past 24 hours, local health officials said.

Health officials at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, said the Israeli military had carried out an air strike on a tent encampment west of the city, killing 15 Palestinians displaced by nearly two years of war.

The Israeli military said troops operating in the Khan Younis area had eliminated militants, confiscated weapons and dismantled Hamas outposts in the previous 24 hours while striking 100 targets across Gaza, including military structures, weapons storage facilities and launchers.

In Tel Aviv, families and friends of hostages held in Gaza were among demonstrators who gathered outside a US embassy building on US Independence Day, calling on Trump to secure a deal for all the captives.

The war began when Hamas fighters stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s subsequent military assault has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, while displacing most of the population of more than two million, triggering widespread hunger and leaving much of the territory in ruins.