Israel\u2019s military operation in Rafah has set truce negotiations with Hamas \u201cbackward\u201d, mediator Qatar said on Tuesday, adding that talks have reached \u201calmost a stalemate\u201d. \u201cEspecially in the past few weeks, we have seen some momentum building but unfortunately things didn\u2019t move in the right direction and right now we are on a status of almost a stalemate,\u201d Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told the Qatar Economic Forum. \u201cOf course, what happened with Rafah has set us backward.\u201d Qatar, which has hosted Hamas\u2019s political office in Doha since 2012, has been engaged _ along with Egypt and the United States _ in months of behind-the-scenes mediation between Israel and the Palestinian group. \u201cThere is no clarity how to stop the war from the Israeli side. I don\u2019t think that they are considering this as an option… even when we are talking about the deal and leading to a potential ceasefire,\u201d Sheikh Mohammed said. Israeli politicians were indicating \u201cby their statements that they will remain there, they will continue the war. And there is no clarity on what Gaza will look like after this\u201d, he added. Israel continued to fight Hamas in Rafah on Monday, despite US warnings against a full-scale assault on the south Gaza city that is crowded with displaced Palestinians. A senior US official said negotiations were \u201cat a simmer, they are at a low boil\u201d, but that conversations with the parties were continuing. Hamas\u2019s `decision\u2019 If talks were \u201cto come to life again, it will be because of Hamas\u2019s decision that they are willing to move closer to Israel\u2019s proposal,\u201d the official said, adding if the Palestinian group moved closer to the Israeli position there would be a \u201cslowing down… of the activity in Rafah\u201d. Hamas needs to be \u201chumble enough to have a serious conversation about negotiations, or not, because there\u2019s a real concern that once the conflict is very active and kinetic again that then it will be tough for Hamas leadership to come back seriously to negotiations\u201d, the official added. At a separate news conference, Qatar\u2019s foreign ministry spokesman said humanitarian aid had been unable to reach the people of Gaza since May 9, after Israel launched incursions into Rafah and closed the main aid crossings. \u201cOur brothers in the Gaza Strip have not received any aid since May 9, and this is an indication of the continued perpetuation of the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip,\u201d Majed al Ansari said. Asked whether Doha was reconsidering hosting Hamas\u2019s political leaders in Doha, the Qatari prime minister said \u201cas long as the war is ongoing and there is a need for the communication\u201d, the ejection of Hamas was not being considered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israel\u2019s military operation in Rafah has set truce negotiations with Hamas \u201cbackward\u201d, mediator Qatar said on Tuesday, adding that talks have reached \u201calmost a stalemate\u201d….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17135,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}