12/25/2024–|Last updated: 12/25/202402:03 AM (Mecca time)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said yesterday, Tuesday, that the negotiating team in the Qatari capital will return to Israel to conduct “internal consultations” regarding a prisoner exchange deal with the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) “after an important week of negotiations.”
This comes as Qatar announced that the ceasefire negotiations in the Gaza Strip and the exchange of prisoners “are still ongoing between Cairo and Doha, and it is not possible to predict when an agreement will be reached.”
Thousands also demonstrated in several Israeli cities to demand a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas.
The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation reported – from an informed source – that the deal talks have not faltered and that they are at a stage that requires political decisions in Israel.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry said that ceasefire negotiations in Gaza are still ongoing, within the framework of technical discussions.
In a press conference in Doha, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majid Al-Ansari called on all parties to cooperate with the Qatari-Egyptian-American mediation “with complete seriousness, and without any measures that might hinder the success of these negotiations.”
Highlights of the weekly media briefing by the Advisor to the Prime Minister and Official Spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Majid bin Muhammad Al-Ansari@majedalansari!
!#Qatar_Foreign Affairs pic.twitter.com/1ptQVELOG4
– Qatari Foreign Ministry (@MofaQatar_AR) December 24, 2024
Faltering negotiations
More than once, the prisoner exchange negotiations conducted with Qatari-Egyptian-American mediation faltered as a result of Netanyahu’s insistence on continuing to control the Philadelphia border axis between Gaza and Egypt, and the Rafah crossing in Gaza, and preventing the return of Palestinian faction fighters to northern Gaza by searching the returnees through the Netzarim corridor in the middle of the Strip. The besieged Palestinian.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has continued – with American support and in full view of the whole world – its aggression against Gaza, which has resulted in more than 153,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of whom are children and women, and more than 11,000 missing persons, amid massive destruction and famine that has killed dozens of children. And the elderly, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.
