Qatar is set to host Gaza ceasefire talks on Thursday, seeking a so-far elusive agreement that the United States hopes would stop Iran from striking Israel and avert a wider war.
US, Qatari, and Egyptian mediators have invited Israel and Hamas for negotiations aimed at ending fighting that the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip says has killed nearly 40,000 people in the Palestinian territory.
The talks will be held in the Qatari capital Doha, a source close to Hamas and a second source close to the negotiations said Wednesday. According to a US source familiar with the Doha meeting, CIA director William Burns is scheduled to take part.
Israel confirmed it would attend, though it remained unclear if Hamas, whose October 7 attack on Israel triggered the war, planned to participate.
Mediation efforts have repeatedly stalled since a week-long ceasefire in November — the only pause so far in the war — when dozens of hostages were released by militants in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
A Hamas official said the Islamist movement was “continuing its consultations with the mediators”, after demanding the implementation of a proposal that US President Joe Biden laid out on May 31, instead of holding more talks.
The phased plan would start with an initial six-week “complete ceasefire”, the release of some hostages held in Gaza and a “surge” in humanitarian aid entering the besieged territory as the warring sides negotiate “a permanent end to hostilities”, Biden said at the time.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who spoke in recent days with several of his counterparts in the Middle East, told them that “this ceasefire deal is of vital importance, that we need to do everything we can to get it done, and that escalation is in no one’s interest”, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said on Wednesday.
Iran and its allies blamed Israel, which has not claimed responsibility for the attack that Tehran and armed groups it backs in the region have vowed to avenge, raising fears of a wider conflict more than 10 months into the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
