War in the Gaza Strip
US mediator rejects Hamas response to ceasefire plan
Updated on May 31, 2025 – 11:11 p.m.Reading time: 2 min.
The Islamists accept the core of a plan for a ceasefire in the Gaza War. Several hostages are to be released. But Hamas provides other conditions.
In the struggle for a ceasefire in the Gaza War, the United States rejected the feedback from Islamist Hamas. On the platform X, US mediator Steve Witkoff said that Hamas’ answer to a plan supported by the USA and Israel for a ceasefire, which was initially limited to 60 days, was “completely unacceptable”. Hamas has to accept the current proposal, then next week further conversations towards a permanent end of the war are possible, he continued.
Israel immediately rejected Hamas’s answer. Israel will continue the efforts to bring the hostages back and defeat Hamas, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The US proposal provides for an release of 10 hostages from the Gaza Strip and the remains of 18 other victims of Hamas. In return, Palestinian prisoners are said to be released in Israel. Hamas wants to agree to this core of the proposal, as she announced on her Telegram channel. At the same time, the Islamists provide other conditions.
For example, the Islamists demand a longer-stretched timing of the hostage clearance when it is planned in the document of the US mediator, as the dpa news agency learned from Hamas circles. They also want Israel’s military to withdraw from the Gaza Strip to a more comprehensive extent after the ceasefire came into force.
According to the Witkoff plan, the two sides should negotiate the release of the war during the 60-day ceasefire about the release of the remaining hostages. There is no guarantee of the final cessation of the fighting – this has been a central demand for Hamas so far. Apparently the terrorist organization states. “Guarantees against the resumption of aggression”, it said.
Israel strictly rejects a ceasefire in which all hostages come and the war comes to an end. Critics accuse her of wanting to continue the war unlimited for domestic reasons.
Israel assumes that there are currently 20 to 23 living hostages and at least 35 corpses of abducted people in the violence of Hamas.
