Israel sends the director of the Mossad intelligence service to attend the Gaza ceasefire talks in Qatar

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to send the center’s director Mossad Foreign Intelligence Ceasefire negotiations in Qatar are an indication of progress in the ceasefire talks The war in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s office announced the decision on Saturday evening local time. It was not immediately clear when David Barnea will travel to the Qatari capital, Doha, to attend the latest round of indirect talks between Israel and the armed Hamas movement. Its presence means that the high-ranking Israeli officials who would have to sign any agreement are now participating.

A brief ceasefire was achieved only once during the 15 months of war, and that was in the first weeks of fighting. The talks brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar have repeatedly faltered since then.

Netanyahu He insisted on destroying Hamas’ ability to fight in Gaza. Hamas insists on a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the largely destroyed area. On Thursday, the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced the end of… 46 thousand Palestinians were killed in the war.

The head of the Israeli internal security service, Shin Bet, and military and political advisors will also be sent to Qatar. Netanyahu’s office said the decision came after a meeting with his defense minister, security officials and negotiators “on behalf of the outgoing and incoming US administrations.”

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

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

The recovery of the bodies of the two hostages last week renewed fears that time is running out. Hamas said that after months of intense fighting, it was no longer certain who was alive or dead.

A statement issued by a group representing the families of some of the hostages said, “Return with an agreement that guarantees the return of all the hostages, even the last ones, the living ones to be rehabilitated and the deceased to be properly buried in their homeland.”

Israel and Hamas They are also under pressure from outgoing President Biden and Trump to reach an agreement before the inauguration on January 20.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week that the agreement was “very close” and expressed hope that it would be completed before the diplomacy was handed over to the incoming Trump administration. But American officials have expressed similar optimism on several occasions over the past year.

Issues in the talks included which hostages would be released in the first part of an interim ceasefire agreement, which Palestinian prisoners Israel would release, and the extent of Israeli forces’ withdrawal from population centers in Gaza.

Hamas and other groups killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 hostage in Gaza in the attack that started the war. A truce in November 2023 led to the release of more than 100 hostages, while others were rescued or their remains recovered over the past year.

On Saturday, an Israeli airstrike killed at least eight Palestinians, including two children and two women, in a school-turned-shelter in northern Gaza, according to Civil Defense, first responders affiliated with the Hamas-run government. She added that the raid on Halawa School, which houses thousands of displaced people in the Jabalia area, also resulted in the injury of 30 others, including 19 children.

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

Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said that another raid killed four people in a street in Gaza City. The Gaza Ministry of Health said that at least 32 bodies arrived at hospitals during the past 24 hours.

“I ask the world, do you hear us? Do we exist?” Hamza Saleh, one of the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people who were displaced from their homes, said. He spoke Friday in the southern city of Khan Yunis as children and others scrambled for food aid and hunger grew.