Hamas to rejoin Gaza ceasefire negotiations despite Israeli strikes on Al Mawasi

Sources say Palestinian group briefly withdrew from the negotiations but reversed its decision after US assurances

A Palestinian woman with her children among the ruins of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 14, 2024. AFP

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Gaza ceasefire negotiations will resume this week, sources told The National on Sunday, ending a brief hiatus when Hamas suspended its participation in the talks, blaming Israel’s “attitude” and the killing this weekend of at least 90 Palestinians in an Israeli strike on Al Mawasi camp.

Israel claimed it had killed the head of Hamas' military operations in Gaza in the attack, although there is no independent confirmation.

The sources said Israel’s spy chief, David Barnea of Mossad, was expected to fly to Doha on Thursday to join senior mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the US as well as representatives of Hamas to resume their work towards a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Accompanying Mr Barnea will be a delegation from Mossad’s domestic counterpart, Shin Bet, and officials from the Israeli army’s office on Palestinian prisoners, said the sources.

The brief suspension came as the parties involved in the negotiations were engaged in days of intense contact to iron out a deal to pause the nine-month-old Gaza war and enact a hostage and detainee swap between Israel and Hamas.

The mediators have been trying without success to strike a deal for months, but the chances of a deal significantly increased when Hamas last week softened its conditions for accepting a ceasefire.

However, the killing of at least 90 Palestinians, many women and children, in Saturday’s air strike on the Al Mawasi camp deeply angered Hamas and led to a global wave of condemnation over the loss of life.

Israel said Hamas’s military leader Mohammed Deif was the target of the attack on the camp where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians from other districts have gathered.

A senior Hamas official told AFP that Mr Deif was “fine”.

The Israeli military said the area targeted by the air strike on Saturday was not a tent complex, but an operational compound run by Hamas and that several more militants were there guarding Mr Deif.

Another Hamas official told AFP that Hamas has withdrawn from the Gaza ceasefire negotiations because of Israeli “massacres” and its attitude in the talks.

Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh, meanwhile, said in a statement late on Saturday that he had called the mediators and other countries to urge them to put pressure on Israel to halt the attacks.

He did not suggest that Hamas was withdrawing from the negotiations and the group on Sunday denied as baseless media reports that it was suspending its participation in response to the Al Mawasi massacre.

“It has become clear to everyone that one of the goals of such escalations against our people by [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his Nazi-like government, is to block the way to reaching an agreement to stop the aggression against our Palestinian people in Gaza,” said the group.

However, the sources said Hamas officially informed Egypt and Qatar on Saturday night it was suspending its participation in the negotiations but, they added, it reversed its decision on Sunday after the US, through its fellow mediators, offered assurances that Israel would take a “more sincere” approach to negotiations.

They said Washington wanted the negotiations to resume to deny Mr Netanyahu and his right-wing allies the opportunity to avoid committing to a deal and instead continue the war.

Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that Israel will not stop the war until its declared goal of annihilating Hamas has been met. He maintains that any deal should allow Israel to resume the war.

His allies have threatened to leave the government, threatening its collapse, if he signs a deal.

The Israeli military said the strike against Mr Deif was also aimed at Rafa Salama, the commander of Hamas' Khan Younis Brigade, describing them as two of the masterminds of the October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza. Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people in that attack and took about 240 as hostages.

Israel’s response to the attack was a relentless military campaign on Gaza that has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, wounded more than twice that many and displaced most of the territory’s 2.3 million residents.

The Israeli military operation also razed most of Gaza’s built-up areas and created a humanitarian crisis in which many face hunger while the threat of famine looms over north Gaza.