Netanyahu approves sending Israeli intelligence chief to Qatar to negotiate Gaza ceasefire
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved sending the director of the Mossad foreign intelligence agency to Qatar for ceasefire talks, his office said on Saturday, in a sign of progress in talks on the Gaza war.
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 insisted on destroying Hamas’ ability to fight in Gaza. Hamas insisted on the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the largely devastated territory.
On Thursday, the Gaza Health Ministry said more than 46,000 Palestinians had been killed in the war, most of them women and children, although it did not say how many were combatants or civilians.
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.
Hamas and other groups killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages in Gaza in the attack that started the war, according to Israeli figures. The ceasefire in November 2023 freed more than 100 hostages, while others were rescued or their remains were found over the past year. The Israeli army claims to have killed more than 17,000 militants in its offensive, without providing evidence.
Israel says it has carried out airstrikes on dozens of Hamas targets in Gaza in the past 24 hours, in attacks that Palestinian health authorities say have killed nearly 100 people.
Israel and Hamas are also under pressure from outgoing US President Joe Biden and Trump to reach a deal before the latter’s January 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 determining which hostages would be freed in the first part of a phased ceasefire agreement, which Palestinian prisoners would be released and the extent of Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza’s population centers.
Inside Gaza
On Saturday, an airstrike killed a five-year-old girl and two male relatives in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where an Associated Press team saw them.
The girl’s body, in a pink sweater, was wrapped in foil and laid on the floor of the morgue. Her father knelt down and pressed his face to hers. “God!” he shouted.
Another Israeli airstrike killed at least eight Palestinians, including two children and two women, at a school-turned-shelter in the northern Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense. The attack on Halawa School, which shelters displaced people in the Jabaliya area, also injured 30 others, including 19 children, it said.
In a new report, Amnesty International has accused the state of Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war, which Israel has vehemently denied, saying it respected international law.
The Israeli military said it hit a Hamas command center in a former school in Jabalia, without providing evidence.
The strike killed four people on a street in Gaza City, according to Civil Protection spokesman Mahmoud Basal. In all, 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.
