Israel to send delegation to Qatar for Gaza talks
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Israel will send a delegation to Qatar for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says the changes requested by Hamas to a ceasefire proposal are unacceptable.
Palestinian group Hamas said on Friday it had responded to a US-backed Gaza ceasefire proposal in a “positive spirit”, a few days after US President Donald Trump said Israel had agreed “to the necessary conditions to finalise” 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 on Sunday 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.
Meanwhile, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says two US aid workers have suffered non-life-threatening injuries in a grenade attack at a food distribution site in the Gaza Strip.
The US and Israeli-backed GHF said in a statement that the injured workers were receiving medical treatment and were in a stable condition.
“The attack – which preliminary information indicates was carried out by two assailants who threw two grenades at the Americans – occurred at the conclusion of an otherwise successful distribution in which thousands of Gazans safely received food,” the GHF said.
The GHF, which began distributing aid in the Gaza Strip in May, employs private US military contractors tasked with providing security at their sites.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.
The Israeli military, in a later statement, accused what it called “terrorist organisations” of sabotaging the distribution of aid in the Gaza Strip.
There has been an escalation in violence in the enclave as efforts continue to reach a ceasefire agreement.
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
