Hamas official mocks Israeli offer to exile Sinwar in return for hostages

News that Sinwar was alive and in contact with Qatari officials put to rest rumors that he had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

A member of Hamas’s political bureau, Izzat al-Rishq, dismissed a proposal to spare Hamas leader Sinwar’s life and allow him to live in exile in Sudan in exchange for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip as “an Israeli illusion” and “stupid.”

“Deporting Hamas or its leaders from Gaza is an Israeli dream and illusion that will not come true.”

“The report in one of the enemy’s newspapers regarding the deportation of Hamas leaders to Sudan is a stupid statement,” al-Rishq said.

“We said in the past and we repeat and say now, that Hamas is in Palestine, fighting the enemy that is occupying Palestine,” he continued.

“Logic requires that the criminal occupier leave and the original inhabitants of the land remain.”

Izzat al-Rishq was responding to a report by Kan Reshet Bet that Israel sent an updated hostage proposal to the United States.

The new agreement would demand the return of all remaining hostages in a single phase in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners, the demilitarization of Gaza, and allowing safe passage for Yahya Sinwar out of Gaza to Sudan.

News that Sinwar was alive and in contact with Qatari officials put to rest rumors that he had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate considered the possibility that Sinwar was in fact killed when Israeli warplanes bombed a tunnel where the terrorist leader was suspected to be hiding, Kan, Ma’ariv, Walla, and Ha’aretz all reported.

However, on Wednesday,  Yahya Sinwar, who was thought to be dead, reemerged and demanded the terror group resume its use of suicide bombings inside Israeli cities, leading some within Hamas to describe Sinwar as a “megalomaniac,” The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.