U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas suggested on Wednesday it is receptive to a ceasefire deal with Israel, but did not say whether it would accept the proposal pushed by President Donald Trump.
A peace agreement remains uncertain due to the terrorist group’s demands that any deal include a permanent ceasefire and the total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Trump announced on Tuesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to “the necessary conditions to finalize” a 60-day ceasefire deal amid peace talks led by the U.S., Qatar, and Egypt.
Hamas official Taher al Nunu responded the following day with a statement claiming that his organization is “ready and serious regarding reaching an agreement,” according to the Associated Press.
Hamas is “ready to accept any initiative that clearly leads to the complete end to the war,” al Nunu said as a Hamas delegation is reportedly expected to meet with Egyptian and Qatari mediators in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss the proposal. Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is also expected to head to Cairo in the coming days to hash out negotiations.
Hamas’s agreeable stance comes after the Israel Defense Forces announced last week it had killed “one of the last remaining senior Hamas terrorists” left in the Gaza Strip during a targeted airstrike. Hakham Muhammad Issa al Issa was a founder of Hamas‘s military wing and a central planner of the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The U.S., Qatar, and Egypt have acted as mediators throughout Netanyahu’s war with Hamas, which began in the aftermath of the group’s 2023 attack on Israel that killed roughly 1,200 civilians. The last ceasefire the U.S.-led coalition mediated lasted from January through March of 2025.
After the coalition recently pushed to restart those conversations to end the war in Gaza permanently, Trump announced this week that U.S. negotiators had held “long and productive” meetings with the Israelis to hammer out a ceasefire deal.
“The Qataris and Egyptians, who have worked very hard to help bring Peace, will deliver this final proposal. I hope, for the good of the Middle East, that Hamas takes this Deal, because it will not get better — IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE,” the president said Tuesday.
Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar said Monday that “Israel is serious in its will to reach a hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza.”
“We have opportunities in front of us,” Sa’ar said. “We paid for the new reality in the Middle East with the blood of our soldiers and citizens.”
Still, a deal remains tentative due to Hamas’s historic record of broad demands that have hindered previous peace talks. The group has signaled vague openness to striking a deal in the past, but then made sweeping demands, resulting in no such agreement being struck.
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Netanyahu accepted a recent deal spearheaded by Witkoff. However, Hamas rejected the deal as it did not include a permanent ceasefire and a plan to withdraw Israeli forces from Gaza.
When Hamas offered a ceasefire proposal last month, which called for Israel to accept an immediate permanent ceasefire and the total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, Witkoff swiftly shot down the deal, saying the “totally unacceptable” proposal only “takes us backward.”
