Hamas spokesman refutes Biden’s optimism over ceasefire deal
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Joe Biden’s optimism about an imminent Israel-Gaza ceasefire is just a bid to keep hostile powers calm and there have been “no improvements”, a senior Hamas leader has told Sky News.
The US president told reporters on Friday he was “optimistic” and there are “just a couple more issues” that US, Qatari, and Egyptian negotiators have to resolve between the two sides.
But speaking to Sky News’ special correspondent Alex Crawford, Hamas’s spokesman in Lebanon Dr Ahmad Abdulhadi said this was “not true”.
“The Biden administration is trying to show that the environment is positive. But the first round showed there are no improvements,” he said.
“The mediators told us that the disagreed points haven’t been solved and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu added more conditions on it and made it even more complicated.”
He said Mr Biden’s claims were just to “keep everything sounding positive in the media” and “keep the Axis of Resistance calm and to stop it responding to the assassination and not slip into a regional war”.
The Axis of Resistance refers to the Iranian-led alliance between various Islamist groups, including Hamas.
Israel is believed to have killed Hamas’s chief political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran last month, in what the group described as a “treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran”.
The two descriptions of the negotiations come amid rising tensions in the region and as fresh Israeli strikes were reported in Lebanon and Gaza on Saturday.
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