Israel has proposed giving safe passage out of the Gaza Strip to Hamas’s leader Yahya Sinwar in exchange for freeing hostages it kidnapped from Israel during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack and giving up control of the strip, a senior Israeli official told Bloomberg News on Tuesday.
Israel’s hostage envoy, Gal Hirsch, told the media outlet that an offer for Sinwar’s safe passage was presented a day and a half ago, but he would not characterize the response so far. A request for comment from Hamas by The Hill was not immediately answered.
“I’m ready to provide safe passage to Sinwar, his family, whoever wants to join him,” Hirsch told Bloomberg.
“We want the hostages back. We want demilitarization, de-radicalization of course — a new system that will manage Gaza.”
The Israeli Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
The offer appears to mark a significant gesture from the Israeli government amid stalled efforts to secure a cease-fire and hostage release that has proved elusive over months of negotiations mediated by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar.
“The fierce urgency of now is real for every individual who is suffering as a consequence of this conflict. We feel that urgency, and we — and so we have a determination,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview Tuesday from London.
“Now, at the end of the day, people have to make decisions. Leaders have to make decisions. We can’t make those decisions for them.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier raised the possibility of exile for Sinwar, “but I think the most important thing is that they surrender. If they lay down their arms, the war is over,” he said on the podcast “Call Me Back.”
Israeli military officials have identified Sinwar as a “dead man walking” for his apparent architecture of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, where Hamas gunmen raided southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people — at a music festival, in their homes and on the street — and attacking military bases.
Israel’s subsequent war against Hamas has lasted more than 11 months, with an estimated 40,000 Palestinians killed. Netanyahu said in July that about 14,000 Hamas fighters had been killed.
Sinwar rose to be appointed the official head of Hamas after Israel allegedly carried out the killing of Hamas’s top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, while staying in a guesthouse in Tehran.
Hamas holds approximately 101 hostages it kidnapped from Israel, both alive and the corpses. About 100 hostages were released during a weeklong cease-fire at the end of November, and the Israeli military has freed a little more than a handful of people through military operations.
Israel said that Hamas murdered six hostages as the Israeli military closed in on their location, and the Israel Defense Forces released footage Tuesday of what it said were the tunnels where the hostages were held captive.
The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said that the group has been operating under instructions since June to kill hostages should Israeli forces approach their location.
