Gaza ceasefire talks ‘not very promising’ recently: Qatar

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said on Saturday the pattern of negotiations for a framework ceasefire deal for the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza was “not very promising” in recent days.

“The pattern in the last few days are not really very promising but, as I always repeat, we will always remain optimistic and will always remain pushing,” al-Thani said at the Munich Security Conference.

Qatar’s prime minister said that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas “should not be conditioned” by an agreement on hostage release.

“This is the dilemma that we’ve been in and unfortunately that’s been misused by a lot of countries, that in order to get a ceasefire, it’s conditional to have the hostage deal. It shouldn’t be conditioned,” Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said.

Al-Thani, who is also foreign minister, said he could not get into the details of negotiations but as with past deals there were two elements, the humanitarian conditions in Gaza and the number of Palestinians who would be released in exchange for hostages held by Hamas.

“I believe in this agreement we are talking at a bigger scale and we still see some difficulties on the humanitarian part of these negotiations,” he said.

He added that he thought that if negotiations on the humanitarian element of any deal progressed then the obstacle over the numbers of those released would be ultimately tackled.

Talks involving officials from Qatar, Egypt, Israel and the United States have so far not yielded a deal for a pause in the fighting.