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15-01-2025
DOHA/ JERUSALEM: Talks are resuming in Doha on a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages, as key mediator Qatar says an agreement is “very close”.
A Palestinian official familiar with the negotiations tells media that, for the first time in the war, delegations from Israel and Hamas are holding indirect talks in the same building.
Our Gaza correspondent Rushdi Abualouf says the deal would see action happening in stages, with three hostages released on the first day and Israel beginning to withdraw troops after that.
Envoys for both Biden and President-elect Donald Trump have claimed credit for the progress of the talks, but Trump’s looming inauguration has brought the pressure of a meaningful deadline, Tom Bateman writes.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken to Gaza as hostages.
Israel launched a military offensive in Gaza in response, and the enclave’s Hamas-run health ministry says more than 46,500 people have been killed there during the war.
Gazans displaced by war facing threat of winter
The beaches of Gaza are no longer for day trips. Tens of thousands of people now have to live on the coastline, forced to leave their homes during the war.
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is now displaced and nine in 10 of those living in shelters are in tents, the UN says.
As the temperatures plummet in winter, many people have been falling sick. There have been floods of rainwater and sewage.
While the situation is worst in the north, UN officials are warning of dire shortages of medicines, food, shelter and fuel across Gaza, describing the situation as “catastrophic”.
There are long queues for charity handouts in parts of central and southern Gaza where most people are living.
“When it rains on us, we’re drenched,” says Khan Younis resident Salwa Abu Nimer, crying.
“No flour, no food, no drink, no shelter,” she went on. “What is this life I’m living? I go to the ends of the earth just to feed my children.”
Deal seems closer than ever
A deal to end the war in Gaza seems closer than ever.
“The underlying issues have been ironed out, which is a very positive sign,” Majed al-Ansari, spokesman for the foreign ministry of Qatar, said a short time ago but there was an important caveat too.
“This does not necessarily mean that the deal is a reality.”
It feels like we’ve been here so many times before, most recently just before Christmas.
So it would be wise to keep a degree of scepticism about the coming days. Even if the contours of a deal start to emerge soon, there are all sorts of reasons why the process could still unravel.
The two sides, al-Ansari said; “could still get “lost in the details”.
“The most minor detail can undermine the whole process.”
And there are so many such details. For example, one journalist asked if the return of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s body would form part of the deal. (Int’l News Desk)
