Special Envoy Steve Witkoff Criticizes Hamas Response to Hostage Deal Proposal: ‘Totally Unacceptable’

U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff criticized Hamas for its response to a proposed hostage and ceasefire deal, calling the response “totally unacceptable.”

In a post on X, Witkoff stated that Hamas “should accept the framework proposal” that was put forward, adding that it was “the only way” to “close a 60-day ceasefire day” in the next few days.

“I received the Hamas response to the United States’ proposal,” Witkoff said. “It is totally unacceptable and only takes us backward. Hamas should accept the framework proposal we put forward as the basis for proximity talks, which we can begin immediately this coming week.”

Witkoff continued:

That is the only way we can close a 60-day ceasefire deal in the coming days in which half of the living hostages and half of those who are deceased will come home to their families and in which we can have at the proximity talks substantive negotiations in good-faith to try to reach a permanent ceasefire.

Hamas’s response comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the controversial proposed hostage and ceasefire deal, while Hamas had reportedly criticized it.

Breitbart News previously reported that the ceasefire proposal deal “calls for the release of 10 living hostages — roughly half of those remaining — as well as the bodies of 18 dead Israeli hostages.”

Witkoff’s ceasefire proposal calls for the release of 10 living hostages — roughly half of those remaining — as well as the bodies of 18 dead Israeli hostages, in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire, 125 convicted Palestinian terrorists serving life sentences, 1, 111 Gaza residents detained during the present conflict, and the resumption of humanitarian aid through the United Nations, i.e. not the new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

In Hamas’s response to Witkoff’s proposed hostage and ceasefire deal, Hamas requested that the “sequence and the timetable for the release of the 10 live hostages and the bodies of the 18 dead hostages” be changed, and also requested that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “fully withdraw to the lines it was positioned before the previous ceasefire collapsed in March,” Axios reported.

Hamas’s response was sent through Bishara Bahbah, a Palestinian-American businessman, as well as to mediators in Egypt and Qatar, according to the outlet.