DOHA, July 25. /TASS/. The leadership of Palestine’s Hamas movement is surprised by recent remarks made by US Special Envoy Steven Witkoff and is positive about the consultations in Doha, Al Arabiya reported citing a Hamas source.

"We are shocked by Witkoff’s remarks. We gave our response, and the situation was developing positively," the source was quoted as saying.

He added that the mediators were "positive" about preconditions for a ceasefire, put forward by Hamas.

On July 24, Israel said it received a new response from Hamas about a possible Gaza ceasefire and started to peruse it. The Israeli prime minister ordered the country’s delegation at the Gaza talks in Doha to return home for consultations. In turn, US Special Envoy Steven Witkoff said the US also decided to recall its delegation from Doha because the latest proposal from Hamas showed "a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire."

According to the Al Hadath television channel, the document that was handed over to the mediators contains the demand that Israeli troops be pulled out to a distance of 1.3 kilometers from the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Apart from that Hamas insists that at least part of humanitarian aid be delivered to the enclave "through the United Nations and its agencies" instead of being distributed by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).