Israel will send a delegation to Qatar to try to ‘advance’ cease-fire negotiations

DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israel said that it would send a delegation to Qatar on Monday “in an effort to advance the negotiations” around the cease-fire in Gaza, while Hamas reported “positive signals” in talks with Egyptian and Qatari mediators on starting negotiations on the truce’s delayed second phase.

The statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office gave no details except to say it had “accepted the invitation of U.S.-backed mediators.” Hamas spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua also gave no details. Talks on the second phase should have started a month ago.

There was no immediate comment from the White House, which Wednesday made the surprise confirmation of direct U.S. talks with Hamas.

Over the past week, Israel has pressed Hamas to release half of the remaining hostages in return for an extension of the first phase, which ended last weekend, and a promise to negotiate a lasting truce. Hamas is believed to have 24 living hostages and the bodies of 34 others.

Israel last weekend cut off all supplies to Gaza and its more than 2 million people as it pressed Hamas to agree. The militant group has said that the move would affect the remaining hostages as well.

The cease-fire has paused the deadliest and most destructive fighting ever between Israel and Hamas, sparked by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The first phase allowed the return of 25 living hostages and the remains of eight others in exchange for the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli forces have withdrawn to buffer zones inside Gaza, hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have returned to northern Gaza for the first time since early in the war and hundreds of trucks of aid entered per day until Israel suspended supplies.

Before their weekly rally in Tel Aviv, relatives of hostages appealed to U.S. President Trump, who met with eight former hostages Wednesday.

“Mr. President, a return to war means a death sentence for the living hostages left behind. Please, sir, do not allow Netanyahu to sacrifice them.”

Also on Saturday, foreign ministers from Muslim nations rejected Trump’s calls to empty the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population and backed a plan for an administrative committee to govern the territory to allow reconstruction to go ahead.

The foreign ministers gathered in Saudi Arabia for a special session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to address the situation in Gaza while the 7-week-old cease-fire is in doubt. Its second phase is meant to bring the release of remaining hostages, a lasting truce and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

The gathering supported a plan to rebuild Gaza put forward by Egypt and backed by Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has 57 nations with largely Muslim populations.

Without mentioning Trump, the ministers’ statement said they rejected “plans aimed at displacing the Palestinian people individually or collectively … as ethnic cleansing, a grave violation of international law and a crime against humanity.”

They also condemned “policies of starvation” they said aim to push Palestinians to leave, a reference to Israel’s cutting off all supplies to Gaza in the last week as it presses Hamas to extend the cease-fire’s first phase instead.

Trump has called for Gaza’s population to be resettled elsewhere permanently so the United States can take over the territory and develop it for others. Palestinians have rejected calls to leave.

The ministers at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation gathering supported a proposal that an administrative committee replace Hamas in governing Gaza. The committee would work “under the umbrella” of the Palestinian Authority, based in the occupied West Bank. Israel has rejected the Palestinian Authority having any role in Gaza but has not put forward an alternative for postwar rule.

The foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy and Britain said in a joint statement they welcome the Arab initiative for a Gaza reconstruction plan, calling it “a realistic path.” They added that “Hamas must neither govern Gaza nor be a threat to Israel anymore” and they support the central role for the Palestinian Authority.

Shurafa writes for the Associated Press.