BICOM

Terrorist group Hamas has claimed to have turned down a potential prisoner swap with Israel, saying that its minimum requirements were not met.

A representative of Hamas’s military wing, quoted in Al-Jazeera, said that Israel’s offer was “nowhere near meeting our minimum requirements” without providing any further detail.

Another Hamas source told the Times of Israel the group demanded the release of 60 members imprisoned in Israel and “only after that can we move forward in the negotiations between the sides”.

The 60 Palestinian security prisoners in question were originally released as part of the 2011 deal which freed kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Most of the released prisoners were re-arrested in the wake of the kidnapping and subsequent murder of three Israeli teenagers in summer 2014.

Last week, the Al-Araby Al-Jadeed news site reported that Egyptian officials were encouraging Hamas to engage in talks over three Israeli citizens thought missing in the Gaza Strip. Avera Mengistu, Hisham al-Sayed and Jumaa Abu-Ghanima wandered across the Gaza border of their own accord between 2015 and 2016 and are thought to suffer from mental health issues.

It was widely reported earlier this week that Israel offered through a mediator to release Hamas member Bilal Razaineh in return for either Mengistu or al-Sayed, in what was described as a “humanitarian exchange”. Razaineh is also thought to suffer from mental health issues. However, Hamas is reported to be interested only in an “all or nothing” exchange.

Hamas is also thought to be holding the bodies of Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, two Israeli soldiers who were killed during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. The bodies of both are thought to be part of any future exchange.

In an unrelated development, Hamas claimed this morning that two Palestinians were killed and five other were injured in a reported Israeli air strike in the southern Gaza Strip, near the Egyptian border. There has been no Israeli response yet to the claim.