Qatar expects to decide in the next few days whether to ask senior US, Israeli and Egyptian intelligence figures to travel to Doha to negotiate the final stages of a Gaza ceasefire deal.
The Gulf state was asked by Donald Trump’s transition team to re-engage with the mediation after discussions with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyau, led to a belief that a deal that had been stalled for months was within reach.
Separately Egypt has held talks with Hamas leaders and discussed an exchange of Palestinian political prisoners and Israeli hostages, including some US-Israeli dual citizens.
Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Majed bin Mohammed al-Ansari, said it would make a decision on inviting senior negotiators to Doha this week after assessing whether “we have something robust”.
Qatar pulled back from the mediation process last month saying it felt the talks were not being conducted in good faith.
Trump has said there “will be hell to pay” if the hostages are not released by 20 January, the date of his inauguration, in remarks that seemed directed at Hamas. His message was underlined by Trump’s newly appointed Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, saying it would not be a pretty day if the hostages remained in captivity by the time Trump was inaugurated.
Ansari, insisting the bloodshed had to stop, said: “It is the right time for us to re-engage. There is momentum but we need concessions on both sides. We need positions to be eased.”
The Gaza health ministry said on Sunday that at least 44,708 people had been killed in 14 months of war triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages.
Regional diplomats said the new element was the pressure from the Trump administration on Israel to reach a settlement, partly to focus efforts on squeezing Iran over its nuclear programme.
A stumbling block in the talks has been the Hamas demand that Israel accept that the ceasefire is permanent and that it withdraws completely from Gaza. Israel has proposed a minimum 60-day ceasefire, allowing goods into Gaza.
The Palestinians are proposing that a community support committee, agreed by Hamas and Fatah – which controls the Palestinian Authority – would administer Gaza after the war ends.
The committee has been accepted by Hamas but it is not clear if the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has given his approval.
Israel and the US have been insisting that Hamas can have no future role in Gaza and may believe that the committee, well short of a government, would allow Hamas to remain at least partly in charge. The future governance of Gaza is also complicated by the Israeli determination to end cooperation with Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinians that provides health education and local government services inside Gaza.
Ansari underlined “there has to be a viable Palestinian government model for all the Palestinian territories together and not to allow for the separation of Gaza and the West Bank. This is what got us into this mess. We should not accept it happening again,” he said.
He also urged the international community to show clarity that the annexation of the West Bank by Israel as proposed by some members of the Netanyahu cabinet was a red line.
“The situation in the West Bank has nothing to do with 7 October. It has nothing to do with the security of Israel,” he said. “It is pandering to radical elements within Israel that do not see the existence of Palestine as an issue that needs to be discussed. If you sideline the Palestinian issue it will backfire.”
Referring to the Israeli efforts to dismantle Unrwa, its head, Philippe Lazzarini, said in Doha. “It’s extraordinary, in terms of defiance, that one member state decided to defile the mandate [that was] provided by all the other member states at the general assembly, to prevent and dismantle the agency.”
He said the agency had been put in place by the UN to protect Palestinians.
