Yesterday (7th April), the Egyptian government put forward a proposal for a ceasefire and hostage deal.
- According to this plan, Hamas would release eight living hostages and the bodies of eight dead hostages in exchange for a much larger number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees held by Israel. The ceasefire would last 40 to 70 days.
- The Egyptian plan is a compromise between the Hamas proposal to release five living hostages and the Israeli ceasefire proposal, which would have seen eleven hostages released.
- All three proposals are essentially extensions of the first stage of the ceasefire agreed to in January, and all three leave open the more contentious issues of the second stage, which would see the release of all remaining hostages, a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and an elusive agreement on the future governance of the territory.