An Israeli delegation led by Mossad director David Barnea has returned from Doha on Friday night after meeting with Qatari mediators over Gaza ceasefire talks.
According to a statement from the Prime Minister's Office, the talks were only an initial meeting, and the delegation will return to Doha next week to resume talks. The statement also said that there were still gaps between the two sides that needed to be fixed in order to reach an agreement.
Netanyahu agreed to dispatch a team to Doha for talks on Thursday after Hamas appeared to drop its upfront demand that Israel agree to a permanent ceasefire before a three-stage hostage deal got underway.
Hamas’s insistence that Israel must agree to end the war before it relates to any of the remaining 120 hostages held in Gaza, has been a major stumbling block of the deal.
The Iranian proxy group Hezbollah has linked the fate of its cross-border violence with the IDF along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon to the fate of the Gaza war. So a Gaza ceasefire would effectively end Israel’s two front wars in the south and the north.
Earlier Friday Hamas informed its ally Hezbollah it had agreed to a proposal that would lead to a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah welcomed the step, two sources familiar with the matter said on Saturday.
A Hamas delegation headed by the group's deputy leader Khalil Al-Hayya briefed Nasrallah about the latest developments at a meeting in Beirut, the sources said.
One of the sources, a Hezbollah official, told Reuters that the group would cease-fire as soon as any Gaza ceasefire agreement takes effect, echoing previous statements from the group. "If there is a Gaza agreement, then from zero hour there will be a ceasefire in Lebanon," the official said.
Netanyahu and Biden discuss on their end
Israel and the United States have been hopeful that a breakthrough has occurred. US President Joe Biden first unveiled the three-phased deal on May 31. Hamas had refused to accept it, showing signs of flexibility on the issue only this week under increased pressure from the mediating countries of Qatar and Egypt.
Netanyahu spoke with Biden for half an hour on Thursday night, as the two men went over the details of the deal and the latest amendments to the proposal.
A US official told reporters that there was an agreement on the framework but that there were issues with the sequencing.
Yonah Jeremy Bob and Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.