MOSCOW, November 20. /TASS/. It is too early to speak about any optimism on the matter of prisoner swap with Hamas, Israeli Ambassador to Russia Alexander Ben Zvi told TASS.
"Until we see that it is really happening, I don’t know what can be said about it. Because you can never be certain that Hamas will fulfil their promises and will not invent different pretexts every day," he said.
"So, let us wait and see. Let those who deal with this do it," he added.
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported earlier that progress had been reached in the negotiations between Israel and Hamas. According to the news outlet, Qatari mediators who maintain contacts with Hamas said that the radicals are ready to release a group of 50 women and children first in exchange for a four-or five-day pause in hostilities, the release of some 150 Palestinian children and women from Israeli prisons, and fuel supplies to Gaza. However, Hamas officials said that they had no data on the whereabouts of all the children and their mothers abducted from Israeli territory. They said that the need a ceasefire to gather the hostages together, so, Israel must refrain from airstrikes. Apart from that, Hamas said it would release more hostages if it manages to find them in the enclave during the ceasefire.
According to Israeli authorities, Hamas is holding from 240 to 250 hostages. Most of them are Israeli citizens, including some people with dual citizenship who also hold passports of Germany, the US and other countries. About 35 hostages are not Israeli citizens, most of them being Thai nationals who worked in the country.
Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 200 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ aggressive actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.