• Hamas ‘ready to stop fighting’ if Israel agrees to cease fire
• 17 Palestinians killed in Israeli strike on Gaza school

JERUSALEM: Israel said on Thursday it would send negotiators to Qatar this weekend for talks seeking to reach an elusive Gaza deal, as the death toll soared from a sweeping Israeli operation in the Palestinian territory’s north.

The head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, David Barnea, will head to Qatari capital Doha on Sunday, the Israeli prime minister’s office said, to attend talks with US and Qatari officials.

The apparent resumption of the long-stalled truce negotiations comes with Israel under pressure to end its wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Meeting with Qatar’s leaders in Doha on Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that mediators would explore new options after the failure of previous efforts to seal a ceasefire and prisoner release deal.

“We talked about options to capitalise on this moment and next steps to move the process forward,” Blinken told reporters.

The US and Qatar were seeking a plan “so that Israel can withdraw, so that Hamas cannot reconstitute, and so that the Palestinian people can rebuild their lives and rebuild their futures,” he said.

Qatar said US and Israeli teams would fly to Doha, with Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, adding that Qatari mediators had “re-engaged” with Hamas since the Israeli military killed the group’s leader Yahya Sinwar.

After the new talks were announced, an Israeli group representing families of prisoners called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netan­yahu and Hamas to secure an agreement to free the remaining captives. “Time is running out,” they said.

Meanwhile, a senior Hamas official said on Thursday that the group had told Egyptian officials it was ready to stop fighting in Gaza if Israel committed to a ceasefire deal.

The official said a Hamas delegation discussed “ideas and proposals” related to a Gaza truce with Egyptian officials in Cairo on Thursday.

“Hamas has expressed readiness to stop the fighting, but Israel must commit to a ceasefire, withdraw from the Gaza Strip, allow the return of displaced people, agree to a serious prisoner exchange deal and allow the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” the official said.

Attack on school in Nuseirat camp

At least 17 Palestinians, including children, were killed on Thursday in an Israeli strike on a school in Nuseirat camp in the central part of the Gaza Strip, where people displaced by the fighting were sheltering, Nuseirat’s Al-Awda hospital said.

The Israeli military said it had hit a Hamas command and control centre embedded in a compound formerly used as a school in Nuseirat.

In the northern section of the enclave, where the area around the town of Jabalia has been the target of a weeks-long operation, the military said it had evacuated large numbers of people and detained more than 200 suspected fighters.

“Instead of achieving a ceasefire, war has restarted in northern Gaza. We are being besieged, starved, and hunted by the occupation from the air and from tanks,” one Jabalia resident told Reuters via a chat app.

On Thursday, medics at the Indonesian Hospital, one of three facilities still operating in the area, said one of their colleagues was killed by Israeli fire and another detained on his way to work.

Health officials at the three hospitals, which say they have run out of medical, food and fuel supplies, refused Israeli orders to evacuate the facilities or leave patients unattended.

The Civil Emergency Service said Israeli attacks on their staff caused a suspension in their operations. Three of their men were wounded and another five were arrested by the army while their only fire truck was bombed by a tank.

Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, the rescue service spokesman said people in those areas had been left “without huma­nitarian, medical or rescue services”.

The operation in the north has fuelled fears among Palestinians that Israeli forces are clearing the area in order to create an uninhabited buffer zone for the military after the war or to pave the way for the return of settlers who pulled out of Gaza in 2005.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Thursday more than 770 people have been killed in the north since Israel launched an assault to prevent Hamas from regrouping there.

“Since the start of the military operation in northern Gaza, more than 770 people have been killed,” said a spokesman for the civil defence agency.

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2024