Gaza ceasefire talks see progress, says Qatar, as UN pushes to lift blockade
Qatar reports there has been “a bit of progress” in negotiations to broker a new ceasefire in Israel’s conflict with Gaza as the United Nations issues an urgent call on Israel to end the “total and complete blockade” of the blockaded Palestinian enclave.
Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, received Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Sunday in Doha for talks dominated by Israel’s 18-month Gaza war.
“We made some progress on Thursday compared to previous meetings, but we have to come up with a solution for the key question: how to conclude this war. This is the point of all the negotiations,” said Mohammed, who is also foreign minister.
Media reports indicated David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, flew to Doha on Thursday to confer with Mohammed in efforts to attain a new Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Mohammed didn’t mention specifically what aspects of the ceasefire negotiations have made advances over the last days but mentioned Hamas and Israel disagreed on the end goal of negotiations.
Mediator Qatar has been attempting to revive a ceasefire after a past ceasefire failed after Israel withdrew from it and intensified its military activity on March 18, issuing a complete siege of Gaza. Turkiye’s Fidan averred that the “ethnic cleansing being practiced” by Israel in Gaza contravenes international and humanitarian law.
“Humanitarian assistance has not reached Gaza in two months already. It is a humanitarian crisis being witnessed and observed by the whole world. We must discover a way to end the aggression on Gaza and ensure the assistance will reach … those individuals in dire need,” he stated.
The United Nations indicated that Palestinians in Gaza are being threatened with starvation as World Food Programme warehouses in the enclave are idle after they ran out of supplies last week. On Sunday, UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) declared “the siege must be broken,” further stating that individuals in Gaza “have been driven into a cycle of fatal violence and deprivation.”.
In a previous statement, UNRWA condemned Israel, stating there is nothing that “can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people”. On Saturday, Jonathan Whittall, director of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, accused Israel of “weaponising” aid by withholding it from displaced Palestinians.
“Today, individuals are not living in Gaza. Those who are not dying by bombs and bullets are dying slowly,”
he stated.
“There’s no reason to justify the refusal of humanitarian aid. And humanitarian aid should never be militarised.”
As there were warnings of famine in Gaza, Israel continued its air strikes over the Palestinian region. A minimum of nine individuals had been murdered since Sunday morning as hospitals are flooded with children among the victims.
At least 52,243 Palestinians have been officially confirmed dead and 117,639 injured in Israel’s Gaza war since it started 18 months ago. The Gaza Government Media Office revised its death toll to over 61,700, stating thousands of missing individuals buried under the rubble are assumed dead. At least 1,139 were killed in Israel in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks and over 200 were kidnapped.
Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in the Gaza Strip’s central district,t called Israel’s aerial and ground raids “devastating”.
“It would appear that Israel and Hamas are still engaged in an extended war of attrition, and the Israeli aerial raids keep inundating densely constructed neighbourhoods,”
he explained.
