The top U.S. mediator for the Middle East is traveling the region to encourage discussions on the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, but U.S. officials emphasized Wednesday that there was little progress to report.
Brett McGurk, the top National Security Council official on the Middle East, was in Qatar on Wednesday amid renewed hope for a breakthrough on hostages and a pause in the fighting in Gaza. The combat there has been particularly fierce this week as Israeli forces have encircled the southern city of Khan Younis, where they believe top Hamas commanders are located.
Humanitarian organizations have reported that thousands of civilians are trapped in the city, many in the hospitals.
“We certainly want to see another humanitarian pause put in place,” NSC spokesman John Kirby told reporters Wednesday. “How close we are to that, what parameters are going to look like … that’s all part of the discussions right now.”
The day before, Kirby cautioned that the conversations were still at an early stage. McGurk planned also to assess the Israel Defense Forces’ operations and the protection of civilian life, Kirby said.
Israeli hostage families have ‘nothing left to lose’ in push for new deal
Qatar, meanwhile, responded angrily Wednesday to an alleged recording of Benjamin Netanyahu leaked to Israeli media, in which the Israeli prime minister appears to tell the family members of hostages that Qatari leaders had failed to use their leverage with Hamas to secure their release.
“I don’t thank Qatar” for its efforts, a voice that appears to be Netanyahu’s says in the recording, purportedly of his meeting with family members this week, that was broadcast Tuesday night by Israel’s Channel 12. The voice says Qatar is worse than the United Nations and the Red Cross, which Israel has accused of being sympathetic to Hamas.
Qatari spokesman Majed al-Ansari said Wednesday his government was “appalled” by the remarks, which he called “irresponsible and destructive” but “not surprising.”
If the comments were “found to be true,” Ansari said, “the Israeli PM would only be obstructing and undermining the mediation process, for reasons that appear to serve his political career instead of prioritizing saving innocent lives.”
The voice that appears to be Netanyahu’s also expresses outrage at the United States for its recent agreement to extend its use of Al Udeid air base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military installation in the Middle East, for 10 more years. “I’ve been very angry recently and I didn’t hide it from the Americans,” the voice says.
A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity about private discussions, said they could not confirm that Netanyahu had expressed anger over the Al Udeid lease.
Israel has offered a two-month pause in its war to eradicate Hamas in exchange for a phased release of the remaining hostages, according to an Israeli familiar with the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue. The deal was first reported by the news website Axios.
“There’s a long way to go before reaching any agreements,” one person wrote in a text between Israeli officials that was shown to The Washington Post. “Israel is offering various terms for the return of the hostages, with a pause in fighting seen as a given. … But in no way will Israel give up on destroying Hamas, the return of the hostages.”
Thousands of Hamas-led fighters streamed out of Gaza on Oct. 7 to kill more than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in Israeli communities near the enclave and take another 240 hostage, Israeli officials have said.
After the release in November of more than 100 hostages in exchange for more than 200 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, and the deaths of several hostages in Gaza, it’s believed that 100 living Israelis are still being held in the enclave.
A future release would begin with the remaining civilian women and children, followed by civilian men, military women, military men and finally the bodies of those who have died.
Those phases were first discussed in late November, when a week-long pause in the fighting led to the release of more than 100 women, children and foreign hostages. The U.S. expectation at the time was that the pause would be continued through the phased release of all the hostages.
Kirby said conversations surrounding another potential hostage deal “are very sober and serious. … Hopefully they will bear fruit.”
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Israel has not commented publicly on the reports. Hard-right cabinet members, a key base for Netanyahu’s coalition, expressed misgivings Wednesday over talk of a deal.
“Stopping the war at such sensitive timing could endanger the entire operation and bring about huge costs in the Gaza Strip and other fronts,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said. “At this point, we cannot support stopping the war for a long time.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said he supports bringing home the hostages but opposes a “bad deal.”
Hamas has said it will not release more hostages unless its conditions for an end to hostilities are met. Israel has said it will not withdraw or end the fighting until Hamas’s leadership and military infrastructure are destroyed.
Al-Ansari said Qatar, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas, had “presented ideas to both sides” and was “getting a constant stream of replies from both sides.”
“That in its own right is a cause for optimism,” he said. But “when one side says they don’t accept the two-state solution, that they would not stop this war eventually, talking about the displacement of the Palestinians, that obviously leads to a harder mediation process,” he said, in apparent reference to Netanyahu.
Relatives of hostages held by Hamas disrupted the Israeli parliament’s finance committee on Jan. 22 in Jerusalem. (Video: Reuters)
Netanyahu’s government is under increasing pressure from family members of hostages to bring the captives home. A large majority of countries in the world have called for a humanitarian cease-fire, rather than a temporary pause, and demanded that Israel facilitate increased aid to civilians in Gaza.
What’s the difference between a humanitarian pause and a cease-fire?
The United States has repeatedly said it does not currently support a general cease-fire, and Kirby said Tuesday that Washington would back a humanitarian pause lasting a month or even longer.
“If that would give us the opportunity to get hostages out and get more aid in,” he said, “we would absolutely support a humanitarian pause of a longer length than the week that we were able to accomplish.”
Relief agencies expressed alarm at the intensified fighting in Khan Younis, particularly around Nasser Hospital, where Doctors Without Borders said “thousands” of people, including 850 patients, were trapped.
Many were unable to follow Israeli directions to evacuate the hospital because roads to and from the hospital were inaccessible or too dangerous, the organization said Tuesday on social media.
Nasser is one of two hospitals in southern Gaza still equipped to treat the critically wounded, the organization said. A day earlier, Israel ordered the evacuation of more than 500,000 people in Khan Younis, the U.N. humanitarian affairs office said, from an area that included three hospitals.
The World Health Organization said Wednesday that al-Kheir Hospital, a hospital of around 30 beds in Khan Younis run by nongovernmental organizations, was suffering “military incursions” and several health workers were detained.
Nine displaced people were killed and 75 were injured after tank shells struck a shelter in Khan Younis operated by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees and ignited a fire there, an official said Wednesday.
Thomas White, the director of agency affairs, said two tank rounds hit a building that shelters 800 people. The compound holds thousands, he said.
“Buildings ablaze and mass casualties,” he wrote on social media. “People are trapped.”
White said agency staff had been unable to access the center for two days. It’s in an area on which Israeli forces are advancing after having previously directed Gazans to flee there for their safety.
U.N. teams were trying to reach the center, White said, but found the “agreed upon route with Israeli Army blocked with earth bank.”
The IDF did not respond in detail to questions about the strike on the shelter. It said in a statement that a “combat team is located around [Khan Younis], in the western part, and have begun to operate within it.”
The IDF accused Hamas of having “command and control centers, Hamas outposts and Hamas security headquarters” in the area. It also acknowledged that it’s “a dense area and an area that consists of civilians” as well as shelters and hospitals.
“It is a place that requires very specific methods of action and precise operations,” the IDF said. “This operation will continue for several days until we maximize the achievements: dismantling Hamas’ military framework and Hamas strongholds.”
The U.N. agency operates 154 shelters in Gaza, housing and proing aid to many of Gaza’s 1.7 million displaced people. Since Oct. 7, it has reported 249 incidents affecting its shelters and premises. It estimates that at least 341 displaced people in its shelters have been killed since the beginning of the war.
Kelly Kasulis Cho and Frances Vinall in Seoul; Susannah George in Doha, Qatar; Mikhail Klimentov in Washington; Miriam Berger in Jerusalem; and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
