The fate of 120 remaining hostages in Gaza is critical to any agreement to end the protracted and bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas. However, a senior Hamas official in an interview with CNN said that “no one has any idea” how many of them are alive and that any agreement for their release must includes guarantees for a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

In an interview with CNN in Beirut, Hamas spokesman and politburo member Osama Hamdan spoke about the ongoing ceasefire negotiations while revealing whether Hamas has regretted its decision to attack Israel, given the very high Palestinian death toll.

Hamdan said the latest proposal on the table – an Israeli plan first publicly announced by US President Joe Biden late last month – did not meet Hamas’ demands for an end to the war. He added thatHamas needs “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal of troops from Gaza and let the Palestinians determine their own future, rebuilding, (lifting) the siege… then we will be ready to talk about a fair deal on prisoner exchange,” Hamdan said.

Negotiations on the US-backed proposal have intensified in recent days, but appeared to have stalled on Wednesday after Hamas presented its response in a document 12 days after it was first received. Blinken expressed his dismay at Hamas’ decision to submit “a lot of changes,” describing some of them as “beyond the positions it (Hamas) had previously taken.”

However, Hamdan told CNN that the duration of the ceasefire is a key issue for Hamas, which is concerned that Israel has no intention of proceeding with the second phase of the agreement. The end of hostilities must be permanent, he said, and Israel must withdraw completely from Gaza.

“The Israelis want the ceasefire only for six weeks and then they want to go back to the fight, which I think the Americans, so far, have not convinced the Israelis to accept (a permanent ceasefire),” he said, adding that he believed that the US must convince Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire as part of the agreement.

At the same time, Hamdan repeatedly deflected every question on the role of Hamas in the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza and called the October 7 terrorist attacks, which triggered the current war in Gaza, a “reaction against the occupation”.

“The one responsible or responsible for this is (the Israeli) occupation. If you resist the occupation, they will kill you, if you don’t resist the occupation, they will kill you and expel you from your country. So what should we do, just wait?” he said.

Hamdan also dismissed as false reports that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar said the deaths of thousands of Palestinians were “necessary sacrifices”.

“They were fake messages made by someone who is not Palestinian and sent (to) the Wall Street Journal as part of the pressure against Hamas and the provocation of the people against the leader,” he said without providing details. “No one can accept the killing of the Palestinians, their own people.”

Sinwar has not been seen in public since the October 7 attacks and is believed to be hiding in Gaza, somewhere inside the tunnel network that runs under the strip. He has been designated a terrorist by the US, the European Union, the UK and other countries.