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Hamas appreciates Turkey's readiness to broker prisoners' swap deal

Xinhua, November 25, 2016 Adjust font size:

A senior Hamas official said Thursday that his movement highly appreciated the readiness of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to mediate a prisoners' swap deal between Hamas and Israel.

"We consider this readiness a Turkish bias to the Palestinian people and to thousands of prisoners held in the occupation prisons," said Khalil al-Hayya in an interview with Hamas-run TV al-Aqsa channel.

He also said Israel should "commit itself to the terms of the 2011 prisoners' swap deal."

In Oct. 2011, Egypt brokered a similar deal between Hamas and Israel, where Hamas released a kidnapped soldier captured in 2006 in exchange for 1,028 Palestinian prisoners.

However, Israel re-arrested many of the freed prisoners in 2014, shortly before it waged a large-scale 50-day military offensive on the Gaza Strip.

During that offensive, Hamas announced that it captured two Israeli soldiers and has since said it will not provide any information unless Israel releases Hamas prisoners arrested in in 2014.

On Monday, Erdogan said in an interview with Israeli Television Channel 2 that his country is willing to exert every possible effort to bring missing Israelis back home, as long as "Israel provides guarantees on releasing Palestinian prisoners." Enditem