A senior Hamas official said on Friday that the movement will respond "very soon" to a proposal that includes extending ceasefire periods in the war on Gaza and a phased prisoner exchange, according to what was reported by the Associated Press.

The official pointed out that a permanent ceasefire represents the most important element for Hamas, and that anything else is negotiable.

Senior officials from the United States, Israel, Qatar, and Egypt formulated the multi-stage proposal at the beginning of this week. But Israel refrains from announcing its position on it, while analysts unanimously agreed today that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to thwart the implementation of such a deal.

A high-ranking Egyptian official with direct knowledge of the communications said that Hamas did not provide an official response, but it sent positive signals. The two officials, the Palestinian and the Egyptian, spoke on condition of anonymity because the indirect talks are still ongoing.

The proposal presented to Hamas includes significantly increasing the number of aid trucks entering the Gaza Strip and allowing displaced residents to gradually return to their homes in the north, but it does not explicitly call for a permanent ceasefire.

Israel had announced that it would not agree to end the war as a condition for the release of the hostages.

Netanyahu seriously fears that agreeing on and implementing a prisoner exchange deal and stopping the war will lead to the fall of his government, following the threats of his far-right partners that they will topple the government if Netanyahu agrees to the deal.

Yesterday, Netanyahu repeated his statement that the war on the Gaza Strip “will continue until complete victory over the Hamas movement.”

Yesterday, the head of the extremist Religious Zionism Party and the Israeli Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, expressed his strong opposition to the prisoner exchange deal, through which thousands of Palestinian prisoners and Israeli hostages would be released, and claimed that such a deal is like demanding that Hamas possess an atomic bomb.

The day before yesterday, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir attacked the American administration against the backdrop of reports about a prisoner exchange deal. Ben Gvir repeated his strong opposition to such a deal and his threat to topple the government. He said during a session of the Knesset General Assembly that this deal “seems to pave the way for a less dangerous deal, but it will remain a defeatist deal by all standards.”

He continued, "I say this so that no one will have any doubts. Did we not learn the lesson from the Shalit deal (in which the head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners) was liberated? I heard the White House comment that Netanyahu can speak for himself, but the negotiations (about... The deal continues. I heard what (White House spokesman) Kirby said. Did the United States move to run Israel without informing it? We will not turn into a banana republic. Perhaps the Knesset members on the left want President Biden to decide for us. But this is what I will say: Who He thinks he will create fog here, and then within three hours he will assemble the cabinet in order to ratify a defeatist deal, he is wrong.”