Qatar: ‘Efforts ongoing’ for hostage deal, even as Israel readies to expand Gaza operations

Qatar says it is still pursuing efforts for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal, even after Israel approved expanded military operations and Hamas said it wasn’t interested in further talks.

“Our efforts remain ongoing despite the difficulty of the situation and the continuing catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip,” foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari tells reporters at a regular briefing.

Earlier today a senior Hamas official said the terror group was no longer interested in hostage-ceasefire deal talks with Israel and urged the international community to halt Israel’s “hunger war” against Gaza.

“There is no sense in engaging in talks or considering new ceasefire proposals as long as the hunger war and extermination war continue in the Gaza Strip,” said Basem Naim.

A senior Israeli defense official said yesterday that there was a window of opportunity for a fresh hostage-ceasefire deal until the end of US President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East next week.

The official said that if an agreement is not secured by then, the IDF will launch a wide offensive in the Strip.

The warning came after the security cabinet on Sunday night approved a plan to significantly broaden the military offensive against Hamas, and as the IDF was calling up tens of thousands of reservists.

The plan provided for the “conquering of Gaza” and retaining the territory, an Israeli official said. The plan also included moving the Palestinian civilian population toward the south of the Strip, attacking Hamas, and preventing the terror group from taking control of humanitarian aid supplies.

Israel stopped allowing aid into Gaza on March 2 after the first phase of a ceasefire and hostage release deal ended. The past two-plus months have been the longest time in which no aid has entered the Palestinian territory since war broke out with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Israeli officials say enough aid entered the Strip during a two-month ceasefire at the beginning of the year to allow Gazans to survive the halt in supplies as it seeks to ramp up pressure on Hamas for the return of 59 hostages still captive in the enclave.

But data and testimony from inside the Strip point to a worsening hunger crisis and rising rates of malnutrition. Israel is exploring ways to resume aid deliveries without allowing the goods to wind up in the hands of Hamas or allied terror groups, which are allegedly exploiting the crisis to fund the ongoing war.

The IDF believes that it only has several weeks before there is a major humanitarian crisis in the Strip, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel last week.