Qatari PM: Hostage deal shouldn’t be condition for truce, talks ‘not very promising’

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani speaks during a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (not pictured) as part of Blinken’s weeklong trip aimed at calming tensions across the Middle East, in Doha on January 7, 2024. (Karim Jaafar/AFP)

Qatar’s prime minister said Saturday that a truce deal between Israel and Hamas “should not be conditioned” on an agreement for the release of hostages.

“This is the dilemma that we’ve been in and unfortunately that’s been misused by a lot of countries, that in order to get a ceasefire, it’s conditional to have the hostage deal. It shouldn’t be conditioned,” Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani told the Munich Security Conference.

The comments were striking for the head of a country that has been a key mediator between the sides. While Hamas wants a ceasefire in order to shore up its forces and potentially lead to an end to the war, Israel has repeatedly made clear it sees no reason for a truce other than the release of hostages, and that while it may agree to a pause it does not plan to stop fully fighting until Hamas is dismantled.

Talks involving officials from Qatar, Egypt, Israel and the United States have so far not yielded a deal for a pause in the fighting.

Al-Thani also said talks had been “not really very promising” in recent days.

“I believe that we can see a deal happening very soon. Yet the pattern in the last few days is not really very promising.”

But “we will always remain optimistic, we will always remain pushing.”

It is believed that 130 hostages abducted during Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released prior to that. Three hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 11 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military.

The IDF has confirmed the deaths of 30 of those still held by Hamas, citing new intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza. One more person has been listed as missing since October 7, and their fate is still unknown.

Hamas has also been holding the bodies of fallen IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin since 2014, as well as two Israeli civilians, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who are both thought to be alive after entering the Strip of their own accord in 2014 and 2015 respectively.

Mohammed, who is also foreign minister, said he could not go into the details of negotiations, but as with past deals, there were two elements — the humanitarian conditions in Gaza and the number of Palestinian prisoners who would be released in exchange for the hostages abducted from Israel being held by Hamas.

“I believe in this agreement we are talking at a bigger scale and we still see some difficulties on the humanitarian part of these negotiations,” he said.

He added that he thought if there is progress in negotiations on the humanitarian element of any deal, then the obstacle over the numbers of those released would be ultimately tackled.

Meanwhile, Hamas on Saturday threatened to suspend hostage talks unless urgent aid was brought into the north of the Strip, where aid agencies have warned of a looming famine.

“Negotiations cannot be held while hunger is ravaging the Palestinian people,” a senior source in the Palestinian terror group told AFP, asking not to be identified as he is not authorized to speak on the issue.

And Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh blamed Israel for the lack of progress, adding that Hamas “will not accept anything less than a complete cessation of the aggression, withdrawal of the occupation army from Gaza and lifting of the unjust siege.”

Israel has said those are nonstarters, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called Hamas’s demands “delusional.”

On Saturday Netanyahu said his policy was “strong military pressure and tough negotiations.”

He told reporters at a briefing that Hamas’s demands remain “delusional,” and that accepting them would spell defeat for Israel. “Obviously, we won’t agree to them.”

“When Hamas gives up on those delusional demands, we can make progress,” he said.

He said Israel’s military pressure “is working” in Gaza, with most Hamas battalions destroyed. “We won’t stop until they are all destroyed,” he said.

The Hamas leadership is on the run, and running out of places to hide, he asserted. “The day is near” when the Hamas leaders will have nowhere left to escape, he stated. “It’s only a matter of time.”