US and Israeli intelligence chiefs will travel to Doha on Wednesday for discussions on a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, a source with knowledge of the talks told AFP.
CIA director William Burns and the head of Israel’s Mossad David Barnea “are travelling to Doha on Wednesday”, the source said on Monday, adding they would meet with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani.
Qatar has been engaged in months of behind-the-scenes negotiations, with support from Egypt and the United States, in efforts to reach a truce in Gaza and a hostage release deal.
Barnea had been in Doha on Friday amid a fresh push by negotiators to reach a deal. Egypt was also due to hold meetings this week.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said discussions in the Qatari capital had focused on “securing a transition from an initial truce to a more sustainable period of calm”.
For months, a prospective cessation of hostilities has centred around a phased deal beginning with an initial truce.
Recent discussions have focused on a framework outlined by US President Joe Biden in late May which he said had been proposed by Israel.
On Monday, a Palestinian official with knowledge of the talks told AFP that while a Hamas delegation would take part in indirect talks with Israel, there were several “points of divergence” between the two sides.
Among them was the Israeli refusal to release 100 Palestinian prisoners who received heavy sentences and “have spent more than 15 years in Israeli prisons, among them senior leaders from Hamas, Fatah, (Islamic) Jihad and the Popular Front”.
The official said another was the Hamas demand for “a complete Israeli withdrawal” from the Rafah crossing with Egypt and the strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Philadelphi corridor “during the fifth week” of any truce.
The other points “relate to the return of displaced people” in Gaza, the official said.
Hamas signalled last week that it would drop its insistence on a “complete” ceasefire, a demand Israel has repeatedly rejected.
Netanyahu’s office reiterated in a statement on Sunday that “any deal will allow Israel to return and fight until all the goals of the war are achieved”.
Ahead of the talks fighting has raged in north Gaza, and elsewhere in the territory, with thousands of Palestinians newly displaced. The developments led Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh to warn negotiations could be reset “to square one,” a statement from the movement said.
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