Hamas has reportedly rejected plans for former British prime minister Tony Blair to be involved in the running of Gaza after a ceasefire with Israel. A transitional “Board of Peace” is set to be led by Donald Trump, with Sir Tony overseeing an interim governing authority. But Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, has said no Palestinian group would accept the plan. “All the factions, including the Palestinian Authority, reject this,” he told the Al Araby TV network yesterday.
This morning, there have been reports of fresh Israeli air strikes in Gaza amid reported confusion as to when a ceasefire would start, following the pact’s ratification by the government led by Benjamin Natanyahu. Under the first phase of the deal, Hamas has 72 hours to release all Israeli hostages, dead and alive. But just 20 are still thought to still be living. Around 250 Palestinian prisoners will be released from jails across the border.
Trump did not mention Hamas’s concerns about the way Gaza would be governed during a live-streamed cabinet meeting on Thursday, the MailOnline reports.
The Chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Dame Emily Thornberry, has said regarding former prime minister Sir Tony Blair’s involvement in a Board of Peace to oversee an interim governing authority for Gaza: “I’m completely relaxed about whoever it is.
“I don’t really care.
“What matters to me is what works.”
She added that it would be good if Sir Tony has the trust of all parties, has a role and he wants to do it, and it is felt that he has a positive role to play.
“Or anyone else – I really don’t mind,” Dame Emily said.
“All I care about is that we don’t have Hamas involved – they have no future in Gaza – and we make sure that we’re heading towards two states and we’re heading towards peace.”
It comes as the terms of the deal were in place more than a year ago under President Joe Biden, an independent Israeli negotiator has claimed, and could have been agreed months ago.
“This deal could have been done a long time ago,” Gershon Baskin, who led negotiations that freed the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011, said, according to the Times.
“Hamas agreed to all of the same terms in September 2024 in what became known as the ‘Three Weeks Deal’ that I had received in writing and voice message in Arabic and in English.
“But at that point the response of the Israeli negotiators was that ‘the prime minister did not agree to end the war’.”