Israel Gaza war: Qatar reassessing its role in ceasefire talks

Qatar is reassessing its role as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, the country’s prime minister has said.

Qatar has had a key role – along with Egypt and America – in trying to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the release of Israeli hostages.

But Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said Doha had been exploited and abused and was being undermined by those trying to score political points.

He also said the current peace talks were in a “delicate phase”.

Attempts to secure a ceasefire have been delicate and largely unsuccessful, but the links Qatar has with all sides – including close ties to Hamas – are regarded as crucial to achieving any breakthrough.

Mediators have proposed a six-week truce during which Hamas would free 40 women, children and elderly or sick hostages – an offer Hamas publicly rejected over the weekend.

Qatar is now openly questioning chances of those talks succeeding and says it is re-evaluating its role as a mediator.

Qatar’s Sheikh Mohammed said its efforts were being undermined by politicians seeking to score points.

“Unfortunately, I mean, we have seen that there has been an abuse of this mediation and an abuse of this mediation in favour of narrow political interests,” he said at a news conference in Doha.

“This means that the state of Qatar has called for a comprehensive evaluation of this role. We are now at this stage to evaluate mediation and also evaluate how the parties engage in this mediation.”

He did not identify any individuals but some critical voices from within the US Congress have criticised Qatar for not putting enough pressure on Hamas to make concessions. The US accused the Palestinian armed group of being “the obstacle to a ceasefire” after it publicly rejected the latest ceasefire offer over the weekend.

With new fears that the damaging war in Gaza could escalate into a wider regional conflict as tensions rise between Israel and Iran, the Qatari premier warned against the expansion of the conflict and called on the wider international community to assume its responsibilities and stop the war.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military said 14 Israeli soldiers had been injured, six of them severely, by anti-tank missiles and drones launched from Lebanese territory towards a village in northern Israel.

The Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said it had fired on a military target in the Arab al-Aramshe area in retaliation for recent Israeli strikes that had killed Hezbollah commanders and other fighters.

Hezbollah – which like Hamas is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, UK and other countries – has been exchanging fire with Israeli forces almost every day along the border since the start of the war in Gaza.

That conflict erupted when Hamas gunmen carried out an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and taking 253 others back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 33,800 people have been killed in Gaza, the majority of them women and children, during Israel’s military campaign to destroy Hamas and release the hostages, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

A week-long ceasefire in November saw 105 hostages – most of them women and children – freed in return for some 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Israeli officials say 133 hostages are being held in Gaza – including four taken captive before the war – but that more than 30 of them are dead.

On Saturday, Hamas put out a statement saying it was ready to agree a “serious and true” hostage exchange deal with Israel but rejected what was currently on the table.

It also reaffirmed that it was sticking to its demands for a permanent ceasefire that would lead to a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and the return of displaced Palestinians to their homes.

Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, whose director is leading the Israeli negotiating team, said on Sunday that Hamas’s stance showed that its leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, “does not want a humanitarian deal and the return of the hostages, is continuing to exploit the tension with Iran, and is striving to unite the sectors and achieve a general escalation in the region”.

US Department of State spokesman Matthew Miller said on Monday: “The bottom line is Hamas needs to take that deal and they need to explain to the world and to the Palestinian people why they aren’t taking it.”

Last week, a senior Israeli official told US media that Hamas had…