Hamas says awaiting Israeli response on truce

Palestinian resistance group Hamas awaits an Israeli reply to its conditions for halting the weekly anti-occupation protests in the Gaza Strip, a leading Hamas member said Monday.

"Hamas is waiting for an Egyptian delegation to return to Gaza in a few days to study the Israeli response," Suhail al-Hindi told Anadolu Agency in an exclusive interview.

An Egyptian delegation conducting a shuttle diplomacy between Hamas and Israel visited Gaza last week for talks with Hamas leaders regarding a truce between the two sides.

During the talks, al-Hindi said, Hamas has reiterated its demands, including lifting Israel's years-long siege on Gaza, increasing the fishing zone for Palestinian fishermen and solving a chronic power crisis in the strip.

He said the Egyptian delegation also conveyed the Israeli demands, including halting the launch of arson balloons from Gaza into Israel.

"The protests will continue…until all goals are achieved," al-Hindi stressed.

More than 250 Palestinian demonstrators have been martyred by Israeli army gunfire since Palestinians began holding regular demonstrations along the Gaza-Israel buffer zone in March of last year.

Demonstrators demand the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in historical Palestine from which they were driven in 1948 to make way for the new state of Israel.

They also demand an end to Israel's 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave's economy and deprived its roughly two million inhabitants of many basic commodities.