(Corrects the number in the second point)
By Andrew Mills, Nidal al-Mughrabi, Maayan Lubell
DOHA/CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Negotiators met in Qatar on Tuesday hoping to iron out the final details of a Gaza ceasefire, with mediators and warring parties all describing a deal as more closer than ever.
More than six hours after the talks began, no results were still known.
Qatar Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari told a news conference that discussions on final details were ongoing after both sides received a text. U.S. President Joe Biden, whose administration is participating alongside an envoy from President-elect Donald Trump, said a deal was reached.
Hamas said the talks had reached the final stages and that it hoped this round of negotiations would result in an agreement after mediation by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.
An Israeli official said the talks had reached a critical stage although some details needed to be worked out: “We are close, we are not there yet.”
The Islamic Jihad militant group, separate from Hamas and also holding hostages in Gaza, said it would send a high-ranking delegation arriving in Doha on Tuesday evening to take part in final arrangements for a ceasefire deal. -fire.
“The agreement… would free the hostages, end the fighting, ensure Israel’s security and allow us to significantly increase humanitarian aid to the Palestinians who have suffered terribly in this war started by Hamas.” , Biden said Monday.
If successful, the gradual ceasefire – ending more than a year of talks – could end the fighting that has decimated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, left most of the population of the homeless enclave and which still kills dozens of people every day.
That in turn could ease tensions across the Middle East, where war has fueled conflicts in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and raised fears of all-out war between Israel and the Iran.
Israel would recover about 100 hostages and bodies remaining from those captured in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks that precipitated the war. In exchange, this would free Palestinian detainees.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who delivered a speech in Washington outlining a vision for governance of the Palestinian territories after the war, said it was up to Hamas to accept a deal already planned for implementation .
The families of the hostages in Israel were at their wits’ end. Meirav Leshem Gonen, whose 24-year-old daughter Romi was shot and arrested by gunmen at a music festival, told Radio 103 that his family had imagined her return for months as “the light to the end of the tunnel.
“We have to keep our feet on the ground. But on the other hand, we have our heads in the clouds.”
An Israeli official said the first stage of the deal would see the release of 33 hostages, including children, women, some of them soldiers, men over 50, as well as the wounded and sick. Israel would gradually and partially withdraw some of its forces.
A Palestinian source said Israel would release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in the first phase, which would last 60 days.
The families of the hostages who were unlikely to be part of the first group remained worried. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informed relatives of some hostages, others demonstrated outside his office.
“The prime minister should reach an agreement that includes all the hostages, including my son,” said Ruby Chen, whose soldier son, Itay, was killed on October 7, 2023, his body since held in Gaza. “He saved a lot of people, he doesn’t deserve to rot in Gaza.”
THE FIGHTS STILL RAGE
Israel launched its assault on Gaza after Hamas-led fighters stormed its borders on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli counts.
Since then, Israeli forces have killed more than 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials.
Only one ceasefire has been held so far, lasting just one week in November 2023, during which around half of the hostages, including most women, children and foreign workers, were released in exchange for Palestinian detainees.
The two parties have been committed in principle for months to the prospect of a ceasefire accompanied by an exchange of the remaining hostages for detainees. But previous negotiations failed due to the next steps, with Hamas rejecting any deal that did not permanently end the war, while Israel said it would not end the war until Hamas would not be dismantled.
Fighting has raged, concentrated in recent months on Gaza’s northern edge, where Israel says its forces are trying to prevent Hamas from regrouping and Palestinians say Israelis are trying to permanently depopulate a buffer zone. Israeli nighttime strikes continued in the enclave.
Health officials in Gaza said Tuesday that Israeli strikes had killed at least 27 Palestinians over the past day, including a Gazan journalist. One of these attacks killed 10 people in a house in Khan Younis, south of the enclave. Another killed nine people in a tent encampment in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza.
Trump’s inauguration on January 20 is now widely seen as a de facto deadline for a ceasefire agreement. Trump said there would be “hell to pay” unless hostages held by Hamas were released before he took office, while Biden also called for a last-ditch effort to reach a deal before he leaves office .
