Gaza [Palestine], March 21: Hamas senior official Osama Hamdan has said the Israeli response to the group's latest Gaza ceasefire proposal was negative, making it likely that the talks in Qatar would again fail to yield an agreement.
Israel's response to the three-stage proposal handed to mediators was "negative and did not respond to the demands of our people", he said. These included the cessation of the hostilities in Gaza, the return of the displaced to their homes and the withdrawal of the Israeli military from the strip.
While Hamas showed "flexibility," Israel backed away from what it had previously agreed on and continued "to procrastinate", Hamdan said, "which could lead the negotiations to a dead end." He blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for blocking the agreement and added that the US must stop sending arms to Israel if it truly wants to stop "genocide" in Gaza.
UN Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland has told Al Jazeera that he is hopeful that delegations from Israel and Hamas meeting for talks in Doha will succeed in the negotiations that include the release of captives held in Gaza and a pause in Israeli military activity on the ground. "That is the focus here in Doha over the next days," he said.
"The war will only stop if we manage to resolve the issue of the hostages." Speaking of a possible ground invasion in Rafah, where more than one million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, Wennesland said the conflict was at a pivotal moment.
"We are in a terrible situation where the war needs to come to an end as fast as possible," he said. "We're seeing what's going on on the ground and we have a lot of unresolved questions."
On Tuesday, the Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman said that while it remains too early to talk about a breakthrough, Doha remains "cautiously optimistic".
Mossad chief David Barnea, who was leading the Israeli delegation, returned to Tel Aviv on Tuesday to attend a war cabinet meeting, where Israeli officials discussed proposals and counterproposals made in Doha.
Source: Qatar Tribune