The fate of the 120 remaining hostages in Gaza is crucial to any deal to end the protracted and bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas. But a senior Hamas official has told CNN that “no one has an idea” how many of them are alive, and that any deal to release them must include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. In an interview with CNN, Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama Hamdan offered an insight into the militant group’s position on the stalled ceasefire talks, a view on whether Hamas regrets its decision to attack Israel given the mounting Palestinian death toll, and a commentary on the leak earlier this week of messages from its chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the man believed to be the ultimate decision-maker on any peace deal. Speaking to CNN in the Lebanese capital Beirut, Hamdan said the latest proposal – an Israeli plan that was first publicly announced by US President Joe Biden late last month – did not meet the group’s demands for an end to the war. Hamdan told CNN that Hamas needed “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves, the reconstruction, the (lifting) of the siege … and we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange.”Negotiations over the US-backed proposal have intensified recently but appeared to grind to a halt Wednesday after Hamas presented its response to the document, 12 days after first receiving it.