Israeli negotiators set to head to Qatar for hostage talks, amid Gaza aid cut-off
US envoy Witkoff reportedly expected in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday and in Doha on Wednesday; hostage families sleep outside Defense Ministry, demanding deal
Israel was set to dispatch a delegation to Doha on Monday for a fresh round of talks on extending the fragile ceasefire in Gaza, after cutting off aid to the Strip in a bid to pressure the ruling Hamas terror group there.
White House envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, and then to the Qatari capital on Wednesday, as talks were taking place, Channel 12 news reported. It was unclear when, or whether, he will be in Israel.
The so-called Witkoff outline — which the US backed, but did not claim credit for — is up for discussion in the talks, according to the network. The outline would see Hamas release 10 living hostages, including American-Israeli Edan Alexander, in exchange for a further 60 days of ceasefire.
The first phase of the three-phase hostage-ceasefire deal agreed to in January ended on March 1 with no agreement on subsequent stages that could secure a permanent end to the war, but both sides have since refrained from resuming full-scale fighting.
There are still significant differences over the terms of continuing the truce, which has largely halted the violence that raged since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, when thousands of terrorists invaded from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
Hamas has repeatedly demanded a move to the second phase of the deal — brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States — which would include the release of the 24 remaining presumed-living hostages in exchange for a permanent end to the war.
A further 35 bodies are still held by the terror group — 34 of those taken captive on October 7 and the remains of one soldier killed in 2014.
Israel and the US have sought some arrangement that would extend the truce and see the release of further hostages, without initiating a permanent end to the war against Hamas.
The US has also been involved in separate, direct talks with Hamas that, while broadly aimed at ending the war without the terror group in power, are specifically focused on freeing Edan Alexander, an American-Israeli hostage, as well as securing the release of the bodies of slain Americans still held by the group.
Upon the expiration of the ceasefire deal’s first phase, Israel cut off the supply of goods to the Strip, after hundreds of trucks of aid had entered the enclave each day since the deal went into effect.
Though the move — backed by the US — was met with criticism from some Western countries and condemnation from Arab states, Israel said there was enough aid accumulated in the Strip already to meet the population’s needs, and that further aid would strengthen Hamas and fund its terror activities.
On Sunday, Energy Minister Eli Cohen announced he was also cutting off electricity to the Strip, in a further bid to pressure Hamas — though this was mainly expected to affect a single desalination plant, the only facility in the Strip still running on a power line supplied from Israel.
Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, called the move “a desperate attempt to pressure our people and their resistance through cheap and unacceptable blackmail tactics.”
“We strongly condemn the occupation’s decision to cut off electricity to Gaza, after depriving it of food, medicine and water,” he said in a statement.
Hostage families sleep outside Defense Ministry in protest
Protesters, including several families of hostages, slept rough for a second straight night Sunday outside Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, where they maintained a vigil calling for a deal to secure the release of the remaining captives.
Hundreds of protesters participated in the sit-in on Sunday. The protesters, who manned the vigil in shifts, were joined by activists from the female-led movement Shift 101, including Einav Zangauker, Anat Angrest and Viki Cohen, all of them mothers of hostages, who accuse the country of abandoning their sons.
“Today, we find ourselves with our eyes on the White House,” said Angrest, mother of hostage soldier Matan Angrest.
“Here, across from the Defense Ministry, I ask what soldiers will go to war, what mothers — like us — will send their children if they know that if they fall into captivity, the state will leave them there.
“Our children, Matan [Zangauker] and Nimrod [Cohen], were left behind and the state doesn’t even speak to us about a plan to bring them back. We will entrench ourselves in every kind of protest there is, until the prime minister understands that there is no path to a complete victory other than through the return of the hostages,” she said.
Viki Cohen, the mother of Nimrod Cohen, another soldier who was taken hostage on October 7, 2023 after battling on the Gaza border, asked, “How could it be that the State of Israel abandoned [Nimrod] when he was fighting in a broken tank and continues to abandon him until today?”
“Our longing has grown and we’re exhausted from this journey. We’ve said everything, we’ve pleaded, we’ve met with everyone possible, and there’s no one to listen to us. The government doesn’t listen — you do listen. Remember that our soldiers are our children and we, the mothers, don’t give up.”
Macabit Meir, aunt of hostage twins Ziv and Gali Berman, said that the family doesn’t know what to expect from the Israeli negotiating team leaving for Doha, but fears that only some hostages may be included in whatever deal they hash out.
Smotrich: Israel working to facilitate emigration from Gaza
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Sunday that the government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, is working to establish a “migration administration” that will oversee the exodus of Palestinian residents from the Gaza Strip.
Addressing the Knesset Land of Israel Caucus, Smotrich said that the issue of the budget for such an undertaking “will not be an obstacle” to the task, which he called logistically “complex.”
According to the Ynet news site, Settlements and National Projects Minister Orit Strock, a member of Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionism party, said that the removal of the security threat from Gaza cannot be achieved “except through a voluntary migration plan.”
In an interview with “Meet the Press” on Channel 12 last month, Smotrich claimed that Israel was actively in touch with Washington to discuss the implementation of US President Donald Trump’s call to move residents of the Gaza Strip abroad.
“The process of emigration from Gaza will begin in the coming weeks,” Smotrich stated. “Gazans will have nothing to look for in Gaza in the next 10-15 years. After we return to fighting and all of Gaza looks like Jabalia — they will have nothing to look for there at all.”
In a joint appearance with Netanyahu during the latter’s recent state visit to Washington, Trump called for permanently relocating the entire population of the Gaza Strip, insisting the Palestinians “have no alternative” but to leave the “big pile of rubble” that is Gaza after over 15 months of Israeli bombardment targeting Hamas.
Afterward, Katz said he had instructed the military to prepare a plan that would enable Gazans seeking to leave the Strip voluntarily to do so.
In January, Smotrich said that he was working to turn Trump’s ideas about Gaza into an actionable policy. He has previously stated that Israel should occupy Gaza and “encourage” half of the Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinians to emigrate within two years.
