CAIRO, March 12. /TASS/. Negotiations on establishing a truce in the Gaza Strip continue, but are going on with difficulties, senior Hamas official Mohammad Nazzal said.

"Negotiations are still going on, but with great difficulties," the Al Arabiya TV channel quoted him as saying. Nazzal added that Israel is offering the Palestinian side a temporary truce, which it cannot accept, while the presence of the Israeli military in Gaza is preventing displaced people from returning back to their homes. The last round of talks stalled precisely because Israel refused to meet the movement's demand to end the war in the Palestinian enclave and withdraw its troops from there, said Nazzal, a member of the Hamas Political Bureau.

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.