US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that negotiators will meet in the coming days on reaching a Gaza truce as he again called for Israel and Hamas to strike a deal.
“We talked about options to capitalize on this moment and next steps to move the process forward, and I anticipate that our negotiators will be getting together in the coming days,” Blinken told reporters after talks with key mediator Qatar.
The Doha visit by the top US diplomat follows talks with leaders in Israel and Saudi Arabia. It is Blinken’s 11th visit to the region since the start of the war in Gaza following Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack last year.
Qatar, with the US and Egypt, has led mediation between Israel and the Palestinian militants aimed at securing a truce in Gaza and a hostage and prisoner exchange.
Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani said American and Israeli teams would fly to Qatar, without giving any timetable.
“A negotiating team from the United States will visit Doha alongside the negotiating team from the Israeli side to discuss the means by which a breakthrough can be achieved,” he said.
Asked if Qatar had spoken with Hamas following Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s killing, the prime minister said: “We re-engaged with them. There has been an engagement with the representatives from the political office in Doha.”
“We had some meetings with them in the last couple of days. I believe that until now, there is no clarity what will be the way forward.”
Since a one-week pause in the fighting in November, during which scores of Hamas-held hostages were released, successive rounds of negotiations have failed to halt the war.
But the killing of Sinwar in Gaza last week has renewed hope that fresh life could be breathed into the talks that have been deadlocked for weeks.
In-person meetings in August in Egypt and Qatar, based on an adjustment to an initial plan presented by US President Joe Biden in May, broke up without a final agreement.
In the face of the calls for a deal, both Israel and Hamas, under hardliner Sinwar, signaled deeper entrenchment in their negotiating positions.
US officials identified Sinwar as a key obstacle to talks after he took over leadership of Hamas also in August.
Earlier, talks appeared to grind to a halt after Netanyahu, in particular, insisted on Israeli control of the so-called Philadelphi corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border.
Hamas has yet to choose a successor to Sinwar. Two Hamas sources told AFP this week that the group was moving toward appointing a Doha-based ruling committee rather than a single heir.
AFP
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