Israel is sending the director of the Mossad intelligence agency to Qatar to negotiate a cease-fire in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the sending of the director Mossad foreign intelligence agency negotiations on a ceasefire in Qatar as a sign of progress in the talks on the war in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s office announced the decision Saturday night local time. It was not immediately clear when David Barnea would travel to the Qatari capital, Doha, for the latest round of indirect talks between Israel and the militant group Hamas. His presence means that the senior Israeli officials who should sign off on any agreement are now involved.

In the 15 months of the war, only one short ceasefire was achieved, and that was in the earliest weeks of fighting. Negotiations brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar have stalled several times since then.

Netanyahu he insisted on destroying Hamas’s ability to fight in Gaza. Hamas insisted on the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the largely devastated territory. On Thursday, the Gaza Ministry of Health announced 46,000 Palestinians were killed in the war.

The head of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency and military and political advisers were also sent to Qatar. Netanyahu’s office said the decision followed a meeting with his defense minister, security chiefs and negotiators “on behalf of the outgoing and incoming US administrations.”

The office also released a photo showing Netanyahu with President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who was in Qatar this week.

The families of the approximately 100 hostages still being held in Gaza after being captured in the October 7, 2023 militant attack that sparked the war are pressing Netanyahu to reach a deal to bring their loved ones home.

The discovery of the bodies of the two hostages last week renewed fears that time was running out. Hamas said that after months of heavy fighting, it is not certain who is alive or dead.

“Come back with an agreement that ensures the return of all hostages, every last one – alive for rehabilitation and deceased for a proper burial in their homeland,” a group representing families of some of the hostages said in a statement.

Israel and Hamas they are also under pressure from outgoing President Biden and Trump to reach a deal before the Jan. 20 inauguration.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week that a deal was “very close” and that he hoped to finalize it before handing over diplomacy to the new Trump administration. But US officials have expressed similar optimism on several occasions over the past year.

Issues in the talks included which hostages would be freed in the first part of a phased ceasefire deal, which Palestinian prisoners would be released by Israel and the extent of Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza’s population centers.

Hamas and other groups killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages in Gaza in an attack that started the war. The ceasefire in November 2023 freed more than 100 hostages, while others were rescued or their remains were found over the past year.

An Israeli airstrike on Saturday killed at least eight Palestinians, including two children and two women, at a school-turned-shelter in northern Gaza, according to the Civil Defense, the first unit affiliated with the Hamas-run government. It said 30 others, including 19 children, were also wounded in the attack on the Halawa school, which shelters thousands of displaced people in the Jabaliya area.

The Israeli military said it hit a Hamas command center in a former school in Jabalia, without providing evidence.

Another attack killed four people on a street in Gaza City, Civil Protection spokesman Mahmoud Basal said. Gaza’s health ministry said at least 32 bodies had arrived at hospitals in the past 24 hours.

“I ask the world, can you hear us? Do we exist?” said Hamza Saleh, one of the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents who have been displaced. He spoke Friday in the southern city of Khan Younis as children and others struggled for food aid as hunger grows.