Qatari, US and Egyptian negotiators are running a communications hub in Cairo to protect the ceasefire in Gaza, as Donald Trump said he was not confident the break in fighting would hold.
Violations have already been reported. Medics in Gaza said on Monday that eight people had been hit by Israeli fire. The start of the ceasefire was also delayed when Hamas did not provide the names of hostages to be released.
Trump claimed credit for the deal when his envoy helped to break months of deadlock to secure it before his inauguration. But asked after the event on Monday if he thought it would last, he appeared to distance himself from the conflict. “That’s not our war. It’s their war,” he told reporters.
A top Qatari diplomat said on Tuesday that negotiators were confident the US president would support the deal because his team had played a critical role in securing it.
“If it wasn’t for [Trump] this deal wouldn’t be in place right now. So we are banking on the support of this administration,” said Majed al-Ansari, an adviser to the Qatari prime minister and foreign ministry spokesperson. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, was in touch on a daily basis, he said.
The first stage of the ceasefire is scheduled to last for six weeks. Negotiations on the more challenging second phase are expected to start in early February.
Trust on both sides is negligible, so the communications hub is intended to prevent the ceasefire breaking down under accusations of violations.
Hostage and prisoner releases have also been spaced out to allow time for coordination. A previous ceasefire in November 2023 was “always fragile”, Ansari said, in part because of the tight timeline for releases on both sides.
“Lists were delayed, they came in after the proposed deadlines ... there was a lot of discrepancies between what was agreed upon and the lists we had,” he said.
The current deal “gives us enough time to exchange lists, agree on them, deal with any issues with the lists which might arrive and deal with any breaches”.
When breaches are reported to the Cairo hub, which operates around the clock, mediators speak to both sides, aiming to prevent the situation from escalating.
“This is what has been happening in the last 48 hours. We got calls about possible breaches, we dealt with them immediately and the ceasefire held in place,” Ansari said.
He declined to comment on specific reported violations, citing the sensitivity of the ceasefire arrangements.
Increased aid shipments into Gaza have already begun as part of the deal. More than 900 trucks of aid and 12,500 litres of fuel supplied by Qatar have crossed the border since Sunday, and Ansari said he hoped the figures would rise.
The shipments will focus on meeting basic needs in an area devastated by 15 months of war, where most people are hungry and the medical system has been decimated. Rebuilding is not expected to start until future stages, if they are reached.
A Trump transition official told US reporters that the administration was discussing relocating 2 million Palestinians during reconstruction, with Indonesia one possible destination.
That would be a red line for Qatar, which could not support “any plan that would end with relocation or re-occupation”, Ansari said, but for now the focus was on keeping talks on track. “For now we are concerned with implementation of the deal, of driving it through phase two and getting a sustainable peace in Gaza.”
