Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas' Political Bureau

Cairo, July 4 (RHC)--  Hamas’ Political Bureau chief has contacted Qatari and Egyptian mediators as means of keeping up discussion about underway efforts at reaching a potential truce deal that could end the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

The movement announced the information in a statement on Thursday.  “In recent hours, the fighter brother Ismail Haniyeh conducted phone calls with the mediator brothers in Qatar and Egypt,” the statement said.

The conversations addressed “the ideas that the movement is discussing with them (the mediators), with the aim of reaching an agreement that puts an end to the brutal aggression to which our proud people are being subjected in Gaza.”

The regime has been waging the war since October 7 following Al-Aqsa Storm, a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance movements, during which hundreds were taken captive.

The war has so far claimed the lives of nearly 38,000 Palestinians, most of them women, children, and adolescents.

A seven-day truce, mediated by Doha and Cairo in November, saw Hamas releasing 105 of the captives that had been seized during Al-Aqsa Storm for 240 Palestinian prisoners.

In early May, Hamas agreed to another truce proposal enabling cessation of the Israeli aggression and release of the rest of the captives. The Israeli regime, however, rejected the proposal.  Hamas says another truce deal has to end the war, bring about complete withdrawal of the Israeli forces from the coastal sliver, and involve a genuine captive/prisoner exchange deal
The regime, however, says it will accept only temporary pauses in fighting until Hamas is “eradicated.”

The movement has, however, pledged to defend Gaza with all its resources, and has asserted that it is impossible to eliminate it from the Palestinian territory’s rule.