NEW YORK, March 6. /TASS/. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has much more information about hostages being held in the Gaza Strip than he says publicly, the American journalist Seymour Hersh wrote on his Substack page citing sources in the US intelligence service.

"The American intelligence community has reason to believe, so I have been told, that it and Netanyahu know a great deal more than has been said publicly about the state of Hamas’s Israeli hostages - that is, those still believed to be alive," he said.

Hostages are "the central incentive for Israel to consider a ceasefire agreement," Hersh noted.

Israeli Prime Minister said earlier that the country’s authorities had not yet received the list of hostages that could be released by Hamas, adding that it was too early to speak about a new deal.

The situation in the Middle East escalated sharply on October 7 of last year after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian movement Hamas staged surprise incursions from Gaza into borderline Israeli communities, killing residents of Israeli kibbutzim and taking more than 200 people as hostages, including children, women and the elderly. The radicals described the attack as a response to the aggressive actions of the Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel announced a complete blockade of Gaza and launched retaliatory strikes and a ground military operation against Hamas in the Palestinian enclave as well as strikes on parts of Lebanon and Syria. Clashes have also been reported in the West Bank.