Hamas said it would not take part in the new round of ceasefire talks in Gaza, scheduled for tomorrow in Qatar, but would later hold talks with mediating countries. “Going to new negotiations allows the occupation to impose new conditions and use the labyrinth of negotiations to conduct more massacres,” the senior Hamas official told Reuters Sami Abu Zuhri.
“Hamas is committed to the proposal presented on July 2, which is based on the UN Security Council resolution and Biden’s speech, and the movement is ready to immediately begin discussions on a mechanism to implement it,” Abu Zuhri added. Hamas’s absence from the talks, however, does not eliminate the possibility of seeing results: its chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya is based in Doha, and the Palestinian group has open channels with Egypt and Qatar.. A source familiar with the matter says Hamas wants the mediators to return with a “serious response” from Israel. If that happens, Hamas says, it will meet with mediators after Thursday’s session.
Hamas is losing faith in the US ability to broker a ceasefire in Gaza and will only attend the talks if they focus on implementing the proposal put forward by US President Joe Biden in May and internationally approved, according to Osama Hamdan, a member of the Hamas politburo, according to Israeli press reports.
“We informed the mediators that any meeting should be based on talking about implementation mechanisms and setting deadlines rather than negotiating something new,” Hamdan says, “otherwise, Hamas finds no reason to participate.”