A new round of talks aimed at preventing an Israel-Hamas war has resumed in Doha and is expected to last until Friday, the White House has said.
The talks will also focus on securing the release of a large number of hostages, and a potential agreement is seen as the best hope of preventing an even bigger regional conflict.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt were due to meet an Israeli delegation in Qatar, as the Palestinian death toll in the 10-month war rose to more than 40,000.
A Palestinian official said Hamas would not take part in Thursday’s talks but that its senior officials based in Qatar were ready to discuss any proposals from mediators, as they have done in previous rounds of negotiations.
A ceasefire in Gaza would likely calm tensions across the region and prevent Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah from launching retaliatory attacks on Israel. The move comes after an Israeli airstrike killed a top Hezbollah commander and an explosion in the Iranian capital killed a top Hamas political leader.
Mediators have spent months hammering out a three-step plan under which Hamas would release several hostages captured in the October 7 attack in exchange for a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majid al-Ansari said ceasefire talks were still ongoing and would resume on Friday.
In a statement carried by the Qatar News Agency, he said that “the mediators are firm in their commitment to move forward in their efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza that will facilitate the release of hostages and allow the maximum possible amount of humanitarian aid to be delivered to the region.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli military issued a rare and swift condemnation of an attack by Israeli settlers on a village in the occupied West Bank that left at least one Palestinian dead and another injured.