Talks for a ceasefire in Gaza were dealt a new blow on Thursday after the US and Israel withdrew their negotiating teams.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said his ceasefire negotiators will return to Israel from Qatar for further consultations. US envoy Steve Witkoff said in a statement that the US was doing the same. They made the decision after Israel received Hamas’s response to mediators’ proposal for a 60-day truce.
“While the mediators have made a great effort, Hamas does not appear to be co-ordinated or acting in good faith,” Mr Witkoff said. “We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what led to the breakdown in talks, but Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Hamas wants the release of 200 prisoners serving life sentences and another 2,000 arrested in Gaza after October 7th, 2023, the day the Palestinian militant group triggered the war by attacking southern Israel.
Those are higher than the original proposal that won Israel’s agreement, Channel 12 reported. The station also said there were issues around a potential Israeli troop pullback and a Hamas demand for US guarantees that the ceasefire will go on beyond 60 days as long as talks continue.
Israeli public broadcaster Kan News said Hamas was also insisting that Israel free some people who joined the October 7th attack on Israel.
“We are determined to achieve all the goals of the war,” Mr Netanyahu said in a speech on Thursday. “We are working to achieve another deal to release our hostages. But if Hamas perceives our willingness to reach a deal as weakness and an opportunity to dictate terms of surrender that would endanger the State of Israel, it is making a big mistake.”
The latest disagreement deals a fresh blow to the talks, weeks after US president Donald Trump said a deal was close.
Amid rising starvation in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli government minister said on Thursday that Israel had no duty to alleviate hunger in the territory and was seeking to expel its population.
Far-right politician Amichay Eliyahu, who leads Israel’s heritage ministry, said in a radio interview that “there is no nation that feeds its enemies,” adding that “the British didn’t feed the Nazis, nor did the Americans feed the Japanese, nor do the Russians feed the Ukrainians now”.
He concluded that the government was “rushing toward Gaza being wiped out,” while also “driving out the population that educated its people on the ideas of Mein Kampf”, an anti-Semitic text written by Adolf Hitler.
Life in the West Bank
The office of Mr Netanyahu declined to comment on whether Mr Eliyahu’s remarks had represented the government’s position.
An Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mr Eliyahu’s comments did not reflect military policy.
Mr Eliyahu oversees historical and archaeological sites and institutions in Israel and has no authority over the military. He does not participate in meetings of a small group of ministers who oversee security decisions. His office did not reply to requests for clarification.
Mr Eliyahu’s comments were swiftly condemned by Israeli opposition politicians, who said the minister did not represent the Israeli mainstream. Polling suggests a majority of Israelis favour reaching a ceasefire to release hostages held by Islamist group Hamas.
The interview came amid increasing cases of starvation in Gaza. Israel has blocked all food deliveries to the enclave between early March and late May. While Israel allows some food into Gaza, it has drastically reduced the number of places from which food is distributed, forcing Palestinians to receive food aid from a handful of sites that are hard to access.
The UN’s Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) said that one in five children in Gaza City is malnourished and cases are increasing daily.
Unrwa commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini cited a colleague telling him: “People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses.”
More than 100 international aid organisations and human rights groups have also warned of mass starvation and pressed for governments to take action.
– New York Times/Reuters/Bloomberg
