Captive negotiations 'ongoing', Israelis impeding progress: Qatar
3 Min Read
A Qatari source warns that there were no longer signs of an encroaching breakthrough.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (L) meets with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in Lusail on October 13, 2023. (AFP)
According to a Qatari official, indirect negotiations brokered by Doha for the release of captives seized by Hamas were "ongoing", but the intended ground invasion by "Israel" is impeding the process, according to the Financial Times.
"They are still talking. They are listening," a source knowledgeable on the talks said, adding: "Of course, it’s not the same pace as it was on Thursday and Friday, but the talks haven’t stopped."
However, the source warned that there were no longer signs of an encroaching breakthrough after three sources briefed on the negotiations claimed last week that negotiators were positive of being on the brink of an agreement.
The intended ground invasion has increased concerns among captives’ families about their fates.
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US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said yesterday that "a humanitarian pause would be a good thing to get hostages out, but you can bet that Hamas will try to use that time to their advantage as well", telling CBS, "These are . . . the hard questions that we are trying to pose to Israel as it works to prosecute a campaign against Hamas."
Terms and conditions apply
An unnamed Western diplomat, according to the Financial Times, said "there were high expectations" of a closing deal last week, "the parameters were there, but the devil was in the details because there’s no trust between Hamas and Israel".
Hamas' offer, per a senior official from the Resistance, was that foreigners would be exchanged for a five-day ceasefire, in addition to the UN-supervised delivery of food, fuel and medicine to Gaza’s hospitals.
Nonetheless, additional conditions would apply to free Israeli captives, including the transfer of the wounded to Egypt for treatment via the Rafah border crossing, alongside the release of Palestinian women and children from the Occupation's prisons. Israeli IOF soldiers in captivity would be reserved for a "prisoner swap" further down the line.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met the families of the captives on Saturday, vowing to "exercise and exhaust every possibility to bring them home", as they relayed to him that their "unequivocal demand [was] that military action takes into account the fate of the hostages and missing."
Qatar's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi, who is also a senior negotiator, revealed earlier on Thursday that Qatar has undertaken a "very, very difficult negotiation" between Hamas and "Israel," adding that "the violence increases every day and with the bombing continuous every day, our task has become even more difficult."
"If the mediator wants to perform its task in the best way possible as a state, then we need to reach a period of calm," he said.
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The Qatari diplomat also emphasized that "any escalation whatsoever is going to make our job really harder. Any escalation whatsoever. So we're trying to send those messages to our partners and friends," reaffirming that "We need to reach a period where we can speak logically to both sides and come up with positive initiatives."
