By Andrew Mills and Nidal al-Mughrabi
DOHA/CAIRO (Reuters) – A new round of Gaza ceasefire talks was underway in the Qatari capital Doha on Thursday afternoon, officials said, with Israel’s spy chief joining his U.S. and Egyptian counterparts and Qatar’s prime minister for the closed-door meeting.
The talks began as Gaza health officials reported separately that the death toll in the Palestinian enclave had surpassed 40,000 people, a threshold reached after more than ten months of fighting.
The round of negotiations, an effort to end the bloodshed in Gaza and bring 115 Israeli and foreign hostages home, were put together as Iran appeared on the point of retaliating against Israel following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.
With U.S. warships, submarines and warplanes dispatched to the region to defend Israel and deter potential attackers, Washington is hoping a ceasefire agreement in Gaza can defuse the risk of a full-out wider regional war.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby confirmed that talks had officially begun but cautioned that they were unlikely to produce an agreement on Thursday and would likely continue on Friday. Another official briefed on the negotiations told Reuters the talks were underway.
Hamas officials, who have accused Israel of stalling, did not join Thursday’s talks. However mediators planned to consult with Hamas’ Doha-based negotiating team after the meeting, the official briefed on the talks told Reuters.
Israel’s delegation includes spy chief David Barnea, head of the domestic security service Ronen Bar, and the military’s hostages chief Nitzan Alon, defence officials said on Wednesday.
CIA Director Bill Burns and U.S. Middle East envoy Brett McGurk represented Washington at the talks, convened by Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, with Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel also in Doha.
Israel and Hamas have each blamed the other for failure to reach a deal but in the run-up to Thursday’s meeting, neither side appeared to rule out an agreement.
A source in the Israeli negotiating team said on Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has allowed significant leeway on a few of the substantial disputes.
Gaps include the presence of Israeli troops in Gaza, the sequencing of a hostage release and restrictions on the free movement of civilians from southern to northern Gaza.
Kirby told reporters that negotiators were focused on narrowing the gaps and implementing the framework agreement, which he said had been “generally accepted” by both sides.
“The remaining obstacles can be overcome, and we must bring this process to close,” he said. “Today’s a promising start.”
In the lead-up to Thursday’s talks, Hamas, which rejects any U.S. or Israeli intervention in shaping the “day after” the war in Gaza, told mediators that if Israel made a “serious” proposal that is in line with Hamas’ previous proposals the group would continue to engage in negotiations.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters on Thursday the group is committed to the negotiation process and urged mediators to secure Israel’s commitment to a proposal Hamas agreed to in early July, which he said would end the war and required a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Even as negotiators arrived in Qatar, fighting continued in Gaza, with Israeli troops hitting targets in the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis.
After months of a war which has laid waste to Gaza and driven almost all of its 2.3 million population from their homes, there was a desperate desire for an end to the fighting.
“Enough is enough, we want to get back to our homes in Gaza City, every hour a family is getting killed or a house getting bombed,” said Aya, 30, sheltering with her family in Deir Al-Balah in the central part of the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands have sought refuge from the fighting.
“We are hopeful this time. Either it’s this time or never I am afraid,” she told Reuters via a chat app.
In Tel Aviv, families of some of the hostages protested outside the headquarters of Netanyahu’s Likud party.
“To the negotiating team – if a deal is not signed today or in the coming days at this summit, do not return to Israel. You have no reason to return to Israel without a deal,” said Yotam Cohen, whose brother Nimrod Cohen is a hostage in Gaza.
The hostages were taken in the Hamas raid on southern Israel on Oct 7 in which the militants killed some 1,200 people, triggering the war in Gaza.
SEVERE RESPONSE
In a statement Hamas issued on Wednesday jointly with some smaller factions, it reaffirmed the outstanding demands the factions wanted a ceasefire agreement to achieve.
The group said negotiations should look at ways to implement what was earlier agreed to achieve a ceasefire, a withdrawal of Israeli forces and an end to the siege. They should also cover the opening of border crossings and reconstruction of Gaza as well as a deal on releasing the Israeli hostages and Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Iran’s threat of a response to the killing of Haniyeh has added extra gravity to the talks. Three senior Iranian officials have said that only a ceasefire deal in Gaza would hold Iran back from direct retaliation against Israel.
But a possible escalation from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon is also weighing on the outlook.
(Reporting and writing by Andrew Mills in Doha; Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem and Steve Holland and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
