NEW YORK, December 15. /TASS/. The Palestinian movement Hamas and Israel have resumed hostage release talks but the Jewish state plans to kill the entire Hamas leadership after all hostages return home, Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote on his blog on Substack, citing sources.

"The minute the last hostage is on Israeli soil, the entire [Hamas] leadership - political, religious, and military - will be killed in the countries where they live. Mossad is already tracking them, but killing them before the hostages are out is risky," a US official told Hersh.

According to the journalist, Israel and the Hamas political leadership have resumed contact about a possible exchange of Israeli hostages in return for the release of Palestinians held in Israeli jails in the West Bank. "At this point, I was told, there are 137 Israelis in Hamas custody and still thought to be alive. All were taken hostage on October 7, and as many as thirty-six of them are believed to be active IDF (Israel Defense Forces - TASS) members, men and women between the ages of eighteen to thirty-one. Eight civilian women and two children are still believed to be in custody," Hersh writes.

Hamas has expressed interest in "the exchange of ten hostages in return for the release of as many as forty prisoners now in Israeli custody and a 48-hour ceasefire in the war," Hersh added.

Tensions in the Middle East flared up again on October 7 after militants from the radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip, killing residents of border communities and taking about 200 people, including women, children and the elderly, hostage. Hamas described its attack as a response to the aggressive actions of Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel announced a total blockade of Gaza and started carrying out strikes on targets in the Strip, as well as on certain areas in Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also taking place in the West Bank.