Israel will send a delegation to Qatar on Sunday for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the changes requested by Hamas to a ceasefire proposal were unacceptable.
Palestinian group Hamas said on Friday it had responded to a U.S.-backed Gaza ceasefire proposal in a “positive spirit”, a few days after U.S. President Donald Trump said Israel had agreed “to the necessary conditions to finalize” a 60-day truce.
But in a sign of the potential challenges still facing the two sides, a Palestinian official from a militant group allied with Hamas said concerns remained over humanitarian aid, passage through the Rafah crossing in southern Israel to Egypt and clarity over a timetable for Israeli troop withdrawals.
“The changes that Hamas seeks to make to the Qatari proposal were conveyed to us last night and are not acceptable to Israel,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement late on Saturday.
The prime minister’s office added that the delegation will still fly to Qatar for talks over a possible deal to “continue the efforts to secure the return of our hostages based on the Qatari proposal that Israel agreed to.”
Netanyahu, who is due to meet Trump in Washington on Monday, has repeatedly said Hamas must be disarmed, a position the militant group, which is thought to be holding 20 living hostages, has so far refused to discuss.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Gaza’s health ministry says Israel’s retaliatory military assault on the enclave has killed over 57,000 Palestinians. It has also caused a hunger crisis, displaced Gaza’s entire population internally and prompted accusations of genocide and war crimes. Israel denies the accusations.
(Reuters)
