On Monday, Hamas leader Osama Hamdan denied that his movement had received any confirmation from mediators regarding Israel’s claim that it had drafted a new prisoner exchange deal, stressing that the issue could not be addressed before a “comprehensive cessation of aggression” against the Gaza Strip.

On Saturday, the Hebrew Broadcasting Authority claimed that the head of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, David Barnea, met in the French capital, Paris, on Friday, with the director of the CIA, William Burns, and the Qatari Foreign Minister, Mohammed Abdul Rahman Al Thani, and presented to them “a new proposal for a deal.” A prisoner exchange drawn up by the Israeli negotiating team.

The authority also claimed, quoting what it described as an “informed Israeli source,” that it was agreed at the end of the meeting to “resume deal negotiations” this week, which began on Sunday, while no confirmation of this has been issued from Qatar or the American side until now.

Commenting on this, Hamdan said, during a press conference in the Lebanese capital, Beirut: “Until this moment, we have not been informed of anything by the mediators regarding the exchange deal that Israel claims, and there is nothing serious yet.”

The Hamas leader stressed that "there cannot be any solution to the prisoner exchange issue before the comprehensive cessation of aggression" against Gaza.

He added, "The prisoner exchange deal must be part of a broader deal to stop the aggression, return our people to their homes, and carry out reconstruction."

With the mediation of Qatar, Egypt and the United States, Hamas and Israel have been conducting faltering indirect negotiations for months to reach an agreement to exchange prisoners and stop the war on Gaza that broke out on October 7, 2023.

Over two days, Cairo hosted the last negotiating round, before the Hamas and Israeli delegations left the Egyptian capital on May 9 without announcing that an agreement had been reached, despite the movement’s acceptance at the time of a Qatari-Egyptian proposal, which Israel rejected.

During the press conference, Hamdan stressed that “the occupation will not recover its prisoners from the resistance except according to its conditions that it presented to the mediators in Egypt and Qatar,” the first of which is stopping the war on Gaza and completely withdrawing from it.

He warned that "the occupation's continued procrastination and bombing may mean that its prisoners will return as nothing but corpses, and perhaps they will never return."

Efforts to reach the latest deal were hampered after Israel rejected it, claiming that it “does not meet its conditions,” and began a military operation on the city of Rafah on May 6, then took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing the next day.

Also, Tel Aviv recently questioned the “neutrality” of the Egyptian and Qatari mediators in these talks, which Qatar called on “not to pay attention to,” while Egypt warned that questioning its mediation “may prompt it to withdraw” from them.

Amid a stifling siege imposed by Israel on Gaza for 18 years, and an escalation of its violations against Al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, launched a surprise attack on military sites and settlements adjacent to the Strip on October 7, during which they captured about 239 people.

Later, the factions exchanged 105 of these prisoners, some of whom were foreign workers, for many Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, during a temporary humanitarian truce that lasted 7 days and ended in early December 2023.

While Tel Aviv says that 121 of these prisoners remain in the hands of the factions, the latter confirms that dozens of them were killed in Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip.

Regarding the cessation of work at the Rafah Rabat crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip after Israel took control of it about two weeks ago, Hamdan said that the Rafah crossing is a “purely Egyptian-Palestinian crossing.”

He added: "We renew our call to our brothers in Egypt to force the occupation to withdraw from the crossing."

Israel began a military operation in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, on May 6, and took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing the next day, despite international warnings of the disastrous humanitarian consequences.

In turn, Egypt refused to coordinate with the Israeli side at the crossing, stressing that it “will not accept” the policy of “imposing a fait accompli” followed by Israel, accusing Tel Aviv of being responsible for stopping the crossing’s operation and the escalation of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as a result.