DOHA: Israeli and US intelligence chiefs will travel to Doha on Wednesday for talks on a truce deal between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.
According to AFP, CIA director William Burns and the chief of Israel’s Mossad David Barnea “are traveling to Doha on Wednesday.” AFP cited a source as saying that they would hold meetings with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani during their stay in Doha.
Qatar has been engaged in months of behind-the-scenes talks, with support from the United States and Egypt, in efforts to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and a hostage release agreement. David Barnea had been in Doha on Friday amid a fresh push by negotiators to reach an agreement between Hamas and Israel.
AFP reported that discussions in Doha had focused on “securing a transition from an initial ceasefire to a more workable period of calm. Recent talks have focused on a framework outlined by US President Joe Biden in late May which he said had been suggested by Israel.
Earlier, a Palestinian official told AFP that while a Hamas delegation would take part in indirect discussions with Israel, there were several “points of divergence” between the two parties.
Among them was the Israeli denial to free 100 Palestinian detainees who received heavy sentences and “have also spent over 15 years in Israeli prisons, among them senior leaders from Hamas, the Popular Front and Fatah, (Islamic) Jihad.”
The official added that another was the Hamas demand for “a complete Israeli withdrawal” from the Rafah crossing with Egypt and the strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Philadelphi corridor “during the fifth week” of any ceasefire. According to the officials, the other points “relate to the return of displaced persons” in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas signaled earlier that it would drop its insistence on a “complete” truce, a demand Israel has repeatedly declined. Israeli PM’s office said in a statement on Sunday that “any agreement will permit Israel to return and fight until all the target of the war are obtained.”
Ahead of the discussions fighting has raged in north Gaza, and elsewhere in the territory, with thousands of Palestinian people newly displaced. The developments forced Hamas’s leader Ismail Haniyeh to warn negotiations could be reset “to square one”.
