Qatar, which has long hosted Hamas\u2019 political office in Doha, has alongside Egypt served as an intermediary for the two sides, which do not officially maintain direct contact. <\/p>\n
Except for a brief flurry of activity last month, there have been no real negotiations since six Israeli hostages were executed by Hamas and discovered in a Gaza tunnel at the end of August. During a temporary ceasefire mediated by Qatar and Egypt last November, Hamas released 105 hostages and Israel released 240 Palestinian prisoners. <\/p>\n
Hamas has insisted that any agreement with Israel must lead to a permanent end to the war in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused that demand. In July he effectively spiked a draft hostage and ceasefire deal by introducing a raft of new, 11th-hour demands. <\/p>\n
There are 101 hostages still held in Gaza. Israel\u2019s military campaign, launched in response to Hamas\u2019 October 7 attack, has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health; the UN reported that 70% of the fatalities in the first six months of the conflict were women and children. <\/p>\n
The Israeli minister of economy, Nir Barkat, appeared to offer the first official Israeli reaction to the move, saying on X that \u201cQatar was never a mediator, but Hamas\u2019 defender, the one to fund and protect the terrorist organization.\u201d Netanyahu for years backed payments to Hamas through Qatar, in order to divide Palestinian politics and \u2013 detractors allege \u2013 prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. <\/p>\n
It is not the first time the Qatari government has expressed frustration. in April, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said that Qatar\u2019s efforts were being misused for \u201cnarrow political interests\u201d by some involved in the conflict, \u201cwhich required the state of Qatar to conduct a comprehensive evaluation\u201d of its role. <\/p>\n
The Qatari government has now told the Biden administration that it is willing to restart its mediation efforts \u201cwhen both sides reach an impasse and demonstrate a sincere willingness to return to the negotiating table with the objective of putting an end to the war and the suffering of civilians.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Qatar, which has long hosted Hamas\u2019 political office in Doha, has alongside Egypt served as an intermediary for the two sides, which do not officially maintain direct contact. Except for a brief flurry of activity last month, there have been no real negotiations since six Israeli hostages were executed by Hamas and discovered in a <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9676,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9675","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}