This handout picture released by the Qatar News Agency (QNA) shows Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani (L) walking with his Romanian counterpart Marcel Ciolacu ahead of their meeting in Doha, on April 17, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Negotiations between Israel and Hamas to secure a truce in Gaza and a release of hostages have stalled, Qatar’s Prime Minister said on Wednesday.

“We are going through a sensitive stage with some stalling, and we are trying as much as possible to address this stalling,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani told a news conference with Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu.

Qatar, with the United States and Egypt, has been engaged in weeks of behind-the-scenes talks to secure a truce in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Negotiators are trying to “move forward and put an end to the suffering that the people in Gaza are experiencing and returning the hostages”, Sheikh Mohammed said.

The mediators had hoped to secure a ceasefire before the start of Ramadan, but progress repeatedly faltered without any cessation of hostilities in the Muslim holy month which ended last week.

Instead, fears have grown of the months-long war in Gaza spilling over into a regional conflict after Iran’s first-ever direct attack on its arch-foe Israel this weekend.

The Qatari premier said Doha had “warned from the beginning of this war against the expansion of the circle of conflict, and today we see conflicts on different fronts”.

“We constantly call on the international community to assume its responsibilities and stop this war,” he added, saying people of Gaza faced “siege and starvation” with humanitarian aid being used as a “tool for political blackmail”.

The war began when Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that resulted in about 1,170 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s military has waged a retaliatory offensive against Hamas that has killed 33,899 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Palestinian militants seized about 250 Israeli and foreign hostages during the October 7 attack on Israel, but dozens were released during a week-long truce in November.

Israel estimates 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 who are presumed dead.

Israel signalled openness on Sunday to allowing the return of Palestinians displaced from the northern Gaza Strip as part of truce talks, an apparent accommodation of a core Hamas demand.

The warring sides have stepped up negotiations, mediated by Qatar and Egypt, on a six-week suspension of Israel’s offensive in return for the proposed release of 40 of the 130 hostages still held by the Palestinian Hamas group in Gaza.

Hamas has sought to parlay any deal into an end to the fighting and withdrawal of Israeli forces. Israel has ruled this out, saying it would eventually resume efforts to dismantle the governance and military capabilities of Hamas.

Hamas also wants hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled Gaza City and surrounding areas southward during the first stage of the almost six-month-old war to be allowed back north.

Israel initially refused to do so. But that position has softened, an Israeli official briefed on the Doha talks said.

“We are now willing to discuss a return of some of the displaced,” the official told Reuters, without elaborating on numbers. Israeli media have speculated that the offer would be limited to women and children, to bar gunmen trying to reinforce those the Israeli military is still battling in parts of Gaza City.

The official, who requested anonymity, said Israel has also agreed in principle to release between 700 and 800 Palestinian prisoners in return for the 40 hostages.

That appeared to meet a demand of a Hamas proposal, reported by Reuters on March 15, for between 700 and 1,000 prisoners to be released.

The Israeli official cautioned, however, that any final decision would hinge on how many of the prisoners were senior militants serving long sentences for lethal attacks.

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Jerusalem:

Israel said on Saturday its spy chief had met with his US counterpart as part of efforts to secure the release of hostages still held in Gaza. 

“The head of the Mossad, David Barnea, met yesterday (Friday) with the head of the CIA, Bill Burns, as part of the ceaseless efforts to advance another hostage release deal,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on behalf of the Mossad.

The statement came as mediators scrambled to secure a new truce in the five-month-old war in Gaza before Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month which could begin as early as Sunday, depending on the lunar calendar.

Israel did not send a delegation to the latest round of truce talks in Cairo, and Hamas left on Thursday after expressing frustration with Israel’s positions, heading to Qatar for consultation with the movement’s leadership.

The Israeli statement did not specify where Friday’s meeting between Barnea and Burns took place.

“At this stage, Hamas is entrenching its positions like someone who is not interested in a deal and is striving to inflame the region during Ramadan at the expense of Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip,” it said.

US President Joe Biden warned this week that, without a truce before Ramadan, “Israel and Jerusalem could be very, very dangerous.” 

The Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem has been a flashpoint for violence during Ramadan in past years, and on Friday a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing called on “our people” to mobilise and “crawl” towards the site.

Netanyahu’s government faces enormous domestic political pressure to bring hostages home.

Hamas took about 250 people captive in the October 7 attack that triggered the war in Gaza, some of whom were released during a week-long truce in November. 

Israel believes 99 hostages remain alive in Gaza and that 31 have died. 

“It should be noted that contacts and cooperation with the mediators are continuing all the time in an attempt to bring a reduction of the differences and advance agreements,” Saturday’s Israeli statement said.

 

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Rafah, Gaza:

Israel struck one of the largest residential towers in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, residents said, stepping up pressure on the last area of the enclave it has not yet invaded and where over a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

The 12-floor building, located some 500 metres from the border with Egypt, was damaged in the strike. 

Dozens of families were made homeless though no casualties were reported, according to residents. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the incident.

One of the tower’s 300 residents told Reuters that Israel gave them a 30-minute warning to flee the building at night.

“People were startled, running down the stairs, some fell, it was chaos. People left their belongings and money,” said Mohammad Al-Nabrees, adding that among those who tripped down the stairs during the panicked evacuation was a friend’s pregnant wife.

A Rafah-based official with the Fatah party, which dominates the Palestinian Authority that has limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank, another Palestinian territory, said he feared that hitting the Rafah tower was a sign of an imminent Israeli invasion.

Five months into Israel’s unrelenting air and ground assault on Gaza, health authorities said nearly 31,000 Palestinians had been killed, over 72,500 were wounded and thousands were trapped under rubble.

The offensive has plunged the Palestinian territory, already reeling from a 17-year Israel-led blockade, into a humanitarian catastrophe. Much of it has been reduced to rubble and most of the 2.3 million population have been displaced, with the U.N. warning of disease and starvation.

Three Palestinian children died of dehydration and malnutrition at the northern Al Shifa Hospital overnight, said Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra. Qidra said this raised to 23 the number of Palestinians who had died of similar causes in nearly 10 days.

“This brutal war has ruptured any sense of a shared humanity,” said Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

She called for an end of hostilities to allow for meaningful aid distribution in Gaza, for Hamas to release all hostages without conditions and for Israel to treat Palestinians in its custody humanely and to permit them to contact their families.

The war was triggered by an October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, where 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Negotiations on a ceasefire and the release of 134 hostages still in Gaza seemed to stall ahead of the hoped-for deadline, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on or around March 10.

A Hamas source told Reuters that the group’s delegation was “unlikely” to make another visit to Cairo over the weekend for talks. Hamas blamed the lack of progress on Israel, which has so far refused to give guarantees or commitments to end the war or pull out forces from the Gaza Strip.

In a statement summarizing its operations in Gaza over the past day, the Israeli military said it conducted arrests, located weapons and killed over 30 fighters in Khan Younis, including in the Hamad area, in central Gaza and in the area of Beit Hanoun in the north.

Gaza’s health ministry said at least 82 people were killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip in the last day.

In Khan Younis, medics said at least 23 people were killed in military raids on homes and in Israeli shelling of a housing project in the Hamad area of the city. In the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli fire killed a Palestinian fisherman along the beach, medics said.

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Cairo, Egypt:

Israel boycotted Gaza ceasefire talks in Cairo on Sunday after Hamas rejected its demand for a complete list naming hostages that are still alive, an Israeli newspaper reported.

A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo for the talks, billed as a possible final hurdle before an agreement that would halt the fighting for six weeks. But by early evening there was no sign of the Israelis.

“There is no Israeli delegation in Cairo,” Ynet, the online version of Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, quoted unidentified Israeli officials as saying. “Hamas refuses to provide clear answers and therefore there is no reason to dispatch the Israeli delegation.”

Washington has insisted the ceasefire deal is close and should be in place in time to halt fighting by the start of Ramadan, a week away. But the warring sides have given little sign in public of backing away from previous demands.

After the Hamas delegation arrived, a Palestinian official told Reuters the deal was “not yet there”. From the Israeli side, there was no official comment.

One source briefed on the talks had said on Saturday that Israel could stay away from Cairo unless Hamas first presented its full list of hostages who are still alive. A Palestinian source told Reuters Hamas had so far rejected that demand.

In past negotiations Hamas has sought to avoid discussing the wellbeing of individual hostages until after terms for their release are set.

A U.S. official told reporters on Saturday: “The path to a ceasefire right now literally at this hour is straightforward. And there’s a deal on the table. There’s a framework deal.”

Israel had agreed to the framework and it was now up to Hamas to respond, the U.S. official said.

An agreement would bring the first extended truce of the war, which has raged for five months so far with just a week-long pause in November. Dozens of hostages held by the militants would be freed in return for hundreds of Palestinian detainees.

Aid would be ramped up for Gazans pushed to the verge of famine. Fighting would cease in time to head off a massive planned Israeli assault on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are penned in against the enclave’s southern border fence abutting Egypt. Israeli forces would pull back from some areas and let Gazans return to abandoned homes.

But the proposal appears to stop short of fulfilling the main Hamas demand for a permanent end to the war, while also leaving unresolved the fate of more than half of the more than 100 remaining hostages – including Israeli men not covered by terms to free women, children, the elderly and wounded.

Egyptian mediators have suggested those issues could be set aside for now, with assurances to resolve them in later stages. A Hamas source told Reuters the militants were still holding out for a “package deal”.

Overnight Airtsrike

At a morgue outside a Rafah hospital on Sunday morning, women wept and wailed beside rows of bodies of the Abu Anza family, 14 of whom were killed in their home in airstrike overnight. Relatives opened a black plastic body bag to kiss the face of a dead schoolgirl in a torn sweatshirt and pink unicorn pyjamas.

Later, the bodies were brought to a graveyard and buried, including two infant twins, a boy and a girl, passed down in white bundles and placed in the ground.

“My heart is gone,” wailed their mother, Rania Abu Anza, who also lost her husband in the attack. “I haven’t had enough time with them.”

Gaza authorities said at least eight people were killed on Sunday when a truck carrying food aid from a Kuwaiti charity was hit by an air strike. There was no immediate Israeli comment.

The war was unleashed in October after Hamas fighters stormed through Israeli towns killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israeli forces have killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, with thousands more dead feared unrecovered under rubble.

Swathes of the Gaza Strip have been laid to waste, nearly the entire population has been made homeless, and the United Nations estimates a quarter of Gazans are on the verge of famine.

Residents described heavy bombardment overnight of Khan Younis, the main southern Gaza city, just to the north of Rafah. Further north, where aid no longer reaches, Gaza health authorities said 15 children had now died of malnutrition or dehydration inside the Kamal Adwan hospital where there was no power for the intensive care unit. Staff fear for the lives of six more children there.

Washington dropped 38,000 meals from military aircraft into Gaza on Saturday, though aid agencies say this was only enough to have a marginal impact given the scale of the need.

The final days leading up to the anticipated truce have been exceptionally bloody, with talks overshadowed last week by the deaths of 118 people and wounding of hundreds more near a food convoy.

Israel said on Sunday its initial review of the incident had found that most of those killed or wounded had died in a stampede. Military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israeli troops at the scene initially fired only warning shots, though they later shot at some “looters” who “approached our forces and posed an immediate threat”.

Muatasem Salah, a member of the Emergency Committee at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, told Reuters the Israeli account was contradicted by machine gun wounds.

“The wounded and martyrs are the result of being shot with heavy-calibre bullets,” he said. “Any attempt to claim that people were martyred due to overcrowding or being run over is incorrect.”

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Gaza:

Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen clashed throughout the Gaza Strip over the weekend, both sides said on Sunday, as mediating countries sought common ground for a possible ceasefire that would release hostages held by Hamas.

Prospects for securing any truce looked uncertain, however, with Israel saying it was, in parallel, planning to expand its sweep to destroy Hamas, while the Islamist faction stood firm on its demand for a permanent end to the nearly five-month-old war.

Residents said Israeli forces shelled several areas of the enclave as tanks rolled into Beit Lahiya and soldiers and gunmen waged running battles in the Zeitoun sector of Gaza City – both in the north, which had been conquered early in the offensive.

At least 86 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes since Saturday, medics said. Israel’s military said two soldiers died in fighting in southern Gaza and that its forces had killed or captured several Palestinian gunmen in Zeitoun and elsewhere.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his war cabinet for a briefing late on Saturday by intelligence chiefs who returned from a meeting with Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators in Paris about a possible second Gaza ceasefire.

Truce Talks

The first pause in fighting, in November, saw the release of around half of the 253 people Hamas seized during an October 7 cross-border killing spree that sparked the war. In that deal, Israel freed three times the number of Palestinians from its security prisons and admitted more humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Israeli media, citing unnamed officials, carried reports of a framework for the return of around a third of the 130 hostages still in Gaza over a six-week truce covering the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. There was no formal confirmation from either side.

Palestinian officials said Hamas was insisting on Israel calling off the offensive and withdrawing forces under any deal. Israel signalled intent to move into one of the last towns where Hamas, which is sworn to its destruction, has intact forces.

“We are working to achieve another framework for the release of our abductees, as well as the completion of the elimination of the Hamas battalions in Rafah,” Netanyahu said on Facebook, referring to the town in the far south of Gaza near the border with Egypt.

This week, he added, the Israeli security cabinet would approve military plans for Rafah – including the evacuation of more than a million displaced Palestinian civilians who have been sheltering there, and whose fate worries world powers.

Almost 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, Gaza medical officials say. The Hamas raid of October 7 killed 1,200 people in Israel, which has also lost 241 soldiers in Gaza ground fighting that followed, according to official tallies.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)