With pressure mounting for a cease-fire in Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, Doha hosted a new round of talks Thursday afternoon.
The latest truce talks in the Qatari capital involved Israel's spy chief, his U.S. and Egyptian counterparts and Qatar's prime minister, while the Palestinian resistance group Hamas was absent.
The meetings would look to end Israel's 10-month brutal military campaign, bring 115 Israeli and foreign hostages home, at a time Iran appeared on the point of retaliating against Tel Aviv following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.
With U.S. warships, submarines and warplanes dispatched to the region to defend Israel and deter potential attackers, Washington is hoping a cease-fire agreement in Gaza can defuse the risk of a full-out wider regional war.
Hamas officials, who have accused Israel of stalling, did not join Thursday's talks. However, mediators planned to consult with Hamas' Doha-based negotiating team after the meeting, an official briefed on the talks told Reuters.
Israel's delegation includes spy chief David Barnea, head of the domestic security service Ronen Bar, and the military's hostages chief Nitzan Alon, defense officials said Wednesday.
CIA Director Bill Burns and U.S. Middle East envoy Brett McGurk represented Washington at the talks, convened by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, with Egypt's intelligence chief Abbas Kamel also in Doha.
Israel and Hamas have each blamed the other for failure to reach a deal but in the run-up to Thursday's meeting, neither side appeared to rule out an agreement.
A source in the Israeli negotiating team said Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has allowed significant leeway on a few of the substantial disputes.
Gaps include the presence of Israeli troops in Gaza, the sequencing of a hostage release and restrictions on access to northern Gaza.
In the lead-up to Thursday's talks, Hamas, which rejects any U.S. or Israeli intervention in shaping the "day after" the war in Gaza, told mediators that if Israel made a "serious" proposal that is in line with Hamas' previous proposals the group would continue to engage in negotiations.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters on Thursday that the group is committed to the negotiation process and urged mediators to secure Israel's commitment to a proposal Hamas agreed to in early July, which he said would end the war and required a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Even as negotiators arrived in Qatar, fighting continued in Gaza, with Israeli troops hitting targets in the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis.
After months of a war that has laid waste to Gaza, killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, and driven almost all of its 2.3 million population from their homes, there was a desperate desire for an end to the fighting.
"Enough is enough, we want to get back to our homes in Gaza City, every hour a family is getting killed or a house getting bombed," said Aya, 30, sheltering with her family in Deir al-Balah in the central part of the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands have sought refuge from the fighting.
"We are hopeful this time. Either it's this time or never I am afraid," she told Reuters via a chat app.
In Tel Aviv, families of some of the hostages protested outside the headquarters of Netanyahu's Likud party.
"To the negotiating team – if a deal is not signed today or in the coming days at this summit, do not return to Israel. You have no reason to return to Israel without a deal," said Yotam Cohen, whose brother Nimrod Cohen is a hostage in Gaza.
The hostages were taken during the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion, which killed some 1,200 people, triggering the conflict.
