DOHA: Qatar, a key mediator, said negotiations for a Gaza truce and hostage release deal were in their “final stages” on Tuesday, expressing hope an agreement could be reached “very soon”.
Qatar, Egypt and the United States have intensified efforts to broker a ceasefire to enable the release of hostages taken during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
“The ball is now in Hamas’s court,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. “If Hamas accepts, the deal is ready to be concluded and implemented.”
US President Joe Biden had said the day before that a deal was “on the brink” of being finalised, just ahead of the inauguration of his successor, Donald Trump.
Qatar foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari on Tuesday said the negotiations were in their “final stages”.
“We do believe that we are at the final stages... certainly we are hopeful that this would lead very soon to an agreement,” Ansari said, adding “until there is an announcement... we shouldn’t be over-excited”.
“We have reached a point where the major issues that were preventing a deal from happening were addressed,” he added.
Hamas’s October 7 attack, the deadliest in Israel’s history, resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
On that day, militants also took 251 people hostage, 94 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed 46,645 people, a majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, whose figures the UN considers reliable.
A source briefed on the Doha negotiations said earlier that the heads of Israel’s intelligence agencies, the Middle East envoys for the incoming and outgoing US administrations, and Qatar’s prime minister had been due at the talks.
“Mediators will hold separate talks with Hamas,” the source said.
Israeli media and sources close to the talks said the first phase of a deal would see 33 Israeli hostages freed, while two Palestinian sources close to Hamas told AFP that Israel would release about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange.
An Israeli government official said that “several hundred terrorists will be released” as part of the first phase of the deal.
Israeli media also reported Tuesday that under the proposed deal, Israel would be allowed to maintain a buffer zone inside Gaza during the implementation of the first phase.
Hamas said it hoped for a “clear and comprehensive agreement”, adding it had held consultations with other Palestinian factions and informed them of the “progress made”.
Successive rounds of negotiations have failed to end the deadliest war in Gaza’s history.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich warned on Monday he would oppose any deal that stopped the war, calling the deal on the table “a catastrophe for Israel’s national security”.
On Tuesday, a second far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, said he too opposed a deal.
Israelis, particularly families of hostages held in Gaza, have long called on the government to reach an accord that would bring their loved ones home.
Among the key sticking points in the talks have been disagreements over the permanence of any ceasefire and the scale of humanitarian aid for the Palestinian territory.
Other points of contention include the return of displaced Gazans to their homes, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Palestinian territory and the reopening of border crossings.
Netanyahu has firmly rejected a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and has opposed any Palestinian governance of the territory.
Blinken on Tuesday said Israel would ultimately “have to accept reuniting Gaza and the West Bank under the leadership of a reformed” Palestinian Authority, and “embrace a time-bound, conditions-based path toward forming an independent Palestinian state.”
Even as intense diplomatic efforts continued towards a truce deal, Israeli forces pounded targets across Gaza.
The territory’s civil defence agency said overnight air strikes and shelling killed at least 18 people in Gaza City in the north, the central area of Deir el-Balah and Khan Yunis in the south. “Last night was harsh and bloody,” spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.
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