Mossad chief heads to Doha as US said to pressure mediators to speed up hostage talks

Mossad chief David Barnea will fly to Qatar on Friday to meet CIA director William Burns, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Egypt’s intelligence head Abbas Kamel to discuss a potential truce and hostage release deal in Gaza, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement Thursday.

The next round of hostage talks comes after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken huddled Thursday with top Arab diplomats in Cairo to discuss post-conflict plans for Gaza ahead of a visit to Israel, where he is expected to confer with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet.

An unnamed senior Israeli official told Channel 12 that there had been progress in the negotiations, but no breakthrough yet. According to Channel 12, the US is pressuring mediators Egypt and Qatar to accelerate the talks. Barnea was last in Doha on Monday.

In Cairo Thursday, Blinken met the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to go over ideas for Gaza’s future. A top official from the Palestine Liberation Organization, the internationally recognized body representing the Palestinian people, also attended.

In addition to Gaza’s future, the ministers were expected to discuss the truce talks and efforts to deliver urgent humanitarian aid to Gaza by land, air and sea, as well as efforts for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Both parties renewed their rejection of the forced displacement of Gazans and agreed on the importance of taking all necessary measures to ensure the arrival of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, the statement said.

They also discussed the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel, Reuters reported.

Parachutes drop supplies into the northern Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, March 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

As Blinken and the Arab ministers met, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry raised the territory’s death toll to nearly 32,000 Palestinians since the war began on October 7 with Hamas’s attacks that killed some 1,200 people and saw 253 kidnapped. The Gaza toll does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, of which Israel says there are at least some 13,000.

Also, United Nations officials stepped up warnings that famine was “imminent” in northern Gaza.

In addition to Blinken, the ministers met with PLO Executive Committee Secretary General Hussein al-Sheikh to discuss “efforts to stop the Israeli war against Gaza, the inevitability of achieving a ceasefire, and full access to aid,” the Egyptian foreign ministry’s spokesperson said.

Blinken was also due to meet with Sheikh — a confidant of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and an intermediary in contacts with Israel — along with the Arab foreign ministers, according to an Egyptian foreign ministry note.

Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited control of the West Bank, could play a role in administering Gaza once fighting ends, though Netanyahu has expressed strong opposition.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, talks to Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, during their meeting in Cairo, Egypt, March 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the first stop on his sixth urgent Mideast mission since the war began, Blinken said Wednesday that the “gaps are narrowing” in indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas over another ceasefire and hostage release that the US, Egypt and Qatar have spent weeks trying to broker.

In an interview Wednesday with the Al-Hadath network in Saudi Arabia, Blinken said the mediators worked with Israel to put a “strong proposal” on the table. He said Hamas rejected it, but came back with other demands that the mediators are working on.

“The gaps are narrowing, and I think an agreement is very much possible,” said Blinken, who will travel to Israel on Friday for talks with Netanyahu and his war cabinet.

In the interview, Blinken also implored other countries to rally behind a US draft resolution to the UN Security Council calling for “an immediate ceasefire tied to the release of hostages” held in Gaza.

“I think that would send a strong message, a strong signal,” he said.

File: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convenes a meeting of the war cabinet in Tel Aviv on March 15, 2024. (Kobi Gideon/GPO)

Blinken’s planned meeting with the war cabinet Friday comes after the cabinet’s Thursday meeting was unexpectedly canceled hours before it was supposed to take place. Channel 12 reported that the cancelation was due, among other reasons, to Netanyahu’s unwillingness to divulge details about a potential deal before receiving “concrete” answers from Hamas regarding an earlier proposal.