A top Hamas of­fi­cial said the Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tant group is los­ing faith in the Unit­ed States’ abil­i­ty to me­di­ate a cease-fire in Gaza ahead of a new round of talks sched­uled for this week amid mount­ing pres­sure to bring an end to the 10-month-old war with Is­rael.

Osama Ham­dan told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press in an in­ter­view Tues­day that Hamas will on­ly par­tic­i­pate if the talks fo­cus on im­ple­ment­ing a pro­pos­al de­tailed by U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in May and en­dorsed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

The U.S. re­ferred to it as an Is­raeli pro­pos­al and Hamas agreed to it in prin­ci­ple, but Is­rael said that Biden’s speech was not en­tire­ly con­sis­tent with the pro­pos­al it­self. Both sides lat­er pro­posed changes, lead­ing each to ac­cuse the oth­er of ob­struct­ing a deal.

Hamas is es­pe­cial­ly re­sis­tant to Is­rael’s de­mand that it main­tain a last­ing mil­i­tary pres­ence in two strate­gic ar­eas of Gaza af­ter any cease-fire, con­di­tions that were on­ly made pub­lic in re­cent weeks.

“We have in­formed the me­di­a­tors that … any meet­ing should be based on talk­ing about im­ple­men­ta­tion mech­a­nisms and set­ting dead­lines rather than ne­go­ti­at­ing some­thing new,” said Ham­dan, who is a mem­ber of Hamas’ Po­lit­i­cal Bu­reau, which in­cludes the group’s top po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and sets its poli­cies. “Oth­er­wise, Hamas finds no rea­son to par­tic­i­pate.”

It was not clear late Wednes­day if Hamas would at­tend the talks be­gin­ning Thurs­day.

Ham­dan spoke amid a new push for an end to the war, sparked by the Oct. 7 at­tack on Is­rael in which Hamas-led mil­i­tants killed 1,200 peo­ple and dragged about 250 hostages in­to Gaza. Is­rael re­spond­ed with a dev­as­tat­ing bom­bard­ment and ground in­va­sion that has killed near­ly 40,000 Pales­tini­ans and dec­i­mat­ed wide swaths of the ter­ri­to­ry.

There are now fears that the con­flict could ig­nite a wider con­fla­gra­tion.

In an hour­long in­ter­view, Ham­dan ac­cused Is­rael of not en­gag­ing in good faith and said the group does not be­lieve the U.S. can or will ap­ply pres­sure on Is­rael to seal a deal.

Ham­dan claimed Is­rael has “ei­ther sent a non-vot­ing del­e­ga­tion (to the ne­go­ti­a­tions) or changed del­e­ga­tions from one round to an­oth­er, so we would start again, or it has im­posed new con­di­tions.”

Is­raeli of­fi­cials had no im­me­di­ate com­ment on the claim, but Is­rael has de­nied sab­o­tag­ing talks and ac­cus­es Hamas of do­ing so.

Dur­ing the in­ter­view, Ham­dan pro­vid­ed copies of sev­er­al it­er­a­tions of the cease-fire pro­pos­al and the group’s writ­ten re­spons­es. A re­gion­al of­fi­cial fa­mil­iar with the talks ver­i­fied the doc­u­ments were gen­uine. The of­fi­cial of­fered the as­sess­ment on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty in or­der to share in­for­ma­tion not made pub­lic.

The doc­u­ments show that at sev­er­al points Hamas at­tempt­ed to add ad­di­tion­al guar­an­tors —in­clud­ing Rus­sia, Turkey and the Unit­ed Na­tions — but Is­rael’s re­spons­es al­ways in­clud­ed on­ly the ex­ist­ing me­di­a­tors, the U.S., Egypt and Qatar.

In a state­ment Tues­day, the Is­raeli prime min­is­ter’s of­fice said some changes it has asked for were mere­ly “clar­i­fi­ca­tions” that added de­tails, such as to claus­es that dealt with how Pales­tini­ans will re­turn to north­ern Gaza, how many hostages will be re­leased dur­ing spe­cif­ic phas­es and whether Is­rael can ve­to which Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers will be re­leased in ex­change for Is­raeli hostages. It ac­cused Hamas of ask­ing for 29 changes to the pro­pos­al.

“The fact is that it is Hamas which is pre­vent­ing the re­lease of our hostages, and which con­tin­ues to op­pose the out­line,” Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu said ear­li­er this month.

Ham­dan, how­ev­er, claimed that more than once Hamas ac­cept­ed in whole or in large part a pro­pos­al put to them by the me­di­a­tors on­ly to have Is­rael re­ject it out of hand, ig­nore it, or launch ma­jor new mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the days that fol­lowed.

On one oc­ca­sion, one day af­ter Hamas ac­cept­ed a cease-fire pro­pos­al, Is­rael launched a new op­er­a­tion in Rafah in south­ern Gaza. Is­rael said the pro­pos­al re­mained far from its de­mands.

Ham­dan said that CIA di­rec­tor William Burns told Hamas via me­di­a­tors at the time that Is­rael would agree to the deal.

But, he said, “the Amer­i­cans were un­able to con­vince the Is­raelis. I think they did not pres­sure the Is­raelis.”

U.S. State De­part­ment spokesper­son Vedant Pa­tel told re­porters Tues­day that Wash­ing­ton is mak­ing great ef­forts to pre­vent an es­ca­la­tion of vi­o­lence and end suf­fer­ing in the re­gion.

“We are work­ing around the clock every day,” he said. “Every­one in the re­gion should un­der­stand that fur­ther at­tacks on­ly per­pet­u­ate con­flict and in­sta­bil­i­ty and in­se­cu­ri­ty for every­one.”

Ne­go­ti­a­tions have tak­en on new ur­gency as the war has threat­ened to ig­nite a re­gion­al con­flict.

Iran and the Lebanese mil­i­tant group Hezbol­lah are mulling re­tal­ia­to­ry strikes against Is­rael af­ter the killings of Hamas’ po­lit­i­cal leader, Is­mail Haniyeh, in Tehran and of top Hezbol­lah com­man­der Fouad Shukur in Beirut. Is­rael claimed the lat­ter strike, but has nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied its role in the blast that killed Haniyeh.

Af­ter a brief truce in No­vem­ber that saw the re­lease of more than 100 Is­raeli hostages, mul­ti­ple rounds of cease-fire talks have fall­en apart. Around 110 peo­ple tak­en cap­tive re­main in Gaza, about a third of them be­lieved to be dead.

Ham­dan ac­cused Is­rael of step­ping up its at­tacks on Hamas lead­ers af­ter the group agreed in prin­ci­ple to the lat­est pro­pos­al put for­ward by me­di­a­tors.

Is­rael said that a Ju­ly 13 op­er­a­tion in Gaza killed Mo­hammed De­if, the shad­owy leader of Hamas’ mil­i­tary wing. More than 90 oth­er peo­ple al­so died, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal health of­fi­cials.

Ham­dan in­sist­ed De­if is alive.

Two weeks lat­er, Haniyeh was killed, with Hamas and Iran blam­ing Is­rael. Hamas then named Yahya Sin­war, its Gaza chief seen as re­spon­si­ble for the Oct. 7 at­tack, to re­place Haniyeh — who had been con­sid­ered a more mod­er­ate fig­ure.

Ham­dan ac­knowl­edged there are “some dif­fi­cul­ties” and de­lays in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Sin­war, who is be­lieved to be hid­ing deep in the net­work of tun­nels in the Gaza Strip. But Ham­dan in­sist­ed that this does not pose a ma­jor bar­ri­er to the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The most in­tractable stick­ing point in the talks re­mains whether and how a tem­po­rary cease-fire would be­come per­ma­nent.

Is­rael has been wary of pro­pos­als that the ini­tial truce would be ex­tend­ed as long as ne­go­ti­a­tions con­tin­ue over a per­ma­nent deal. Is­rael seems con­cerned that Hamas would drag on end­less­ly with fruit­less ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Hamas has said it is con­cerned Is­rael will re­sume the war once its most vul­ner­a­ble hostages are re­turned, a sce­nario re­flect­ed in some of Ne­tanyahu’s re­cent com­ments.

All ver­sions of the cease-fire pro­pos­al shared by Ham­dan stip­u­lat­ed that the Is­raeli forces will with­draw com­plete­ly from Gaza in the deal’s sec­ond phase.

Re­cent­ly, how­ev­er, of­fi­cials with knowl­edge of the ne­go­ti­a­tions told the AP that Is­rael had in­tro­duced new de­mands to main­tain a pres­ence in a strip of land on the Gaza-Egypt bor­der known as the Philadel­phi cor­ri­dor, as well as along a high­way run­ning across the breadth of the strip, sep­a­rat­ing Gaza’s south and north. Hamas has in­sist­ed on a full with­draw­al of Is­raeli forces.

Ham­dan said the group had not yet re­ceived in writ­ing the new con­di­tions.

Ham­dan ac­knowl­edged that Pales­tini­ans have suf­fered im­mense­ly in the war and are yearn­ing for a cease-fire, but in­sist­ed that the group couldn’t sim­ply give up its de­mands.

“A cease-fire is one thing,” he said, “and sur­ren­der is some­thing else.” —DO­HA, Qatar (AP)

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Sto­ry by AB­BY SEWELL | As­so­ci­at­ed Press.  AP writ­ers Samy Magdy in Cairo, Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, David Klep­per in Wash­ing­ton and Ju­lia Frankel in Jerusalem con­tributed to this re­port.