‘No engagement at all’ on Gaza cease-fire talks for weeks, Qatar’s PM says

Israel and Hamas have not engaged in talks over a cease-fire in Gaza for around a month, Qatar’s prime minister indicated Wednesday after the EU-Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Brussels.

“In the last three to four weeks, there is no conversation or engagement at all, and we are just moving in the same circle with the silence from all parties,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said at a press conference following the summit.

Qatar, the U.S. and Egypt have been mediating cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas since the beginning of the war in Gaza last year, triggered by the Oct. 7 attack in which Hamas militants killed around 1,200 Israelis and took some 250 hostages into Gaza, leading to Israel’s offensive on the besieged strip.

Qatar has long held a close relationship with Hamas and is widely seen as central in the mediations, which have taken place in fits and starts.

“It always takes the two sides to reach an agreement. If you have one of them [who] is not willing or not interested in an agreement … you can never enforce it,” Al Thani said Wednesday.

Al Thani has been working to keep the talks moving since the beginning of the war, sometimes meeting with Hamas representatives multiple times a day, according to the New York Times.

Al Thani’s comments come as Israel continues its assault on Lebanon, where the Israel Defense Forces began a “new phase” of the war in the region in September, in response to cross-border attacks from Iran-backed militants Hezbollah.

“What’s happened with Lebanon has added to that complication and we have seen that this war is just making the situation for the entire region worse and making it more complicated for us as a mediator,” Al Thani said Wednesday.