Qatari mediators are calling on Hamas to speed up the release of hostages by releasing women and children held in Gaza and to do so without expecting Israeli concessions, Reuters reported, citing diplomats and sources in the region familiar with the talks.
Qatar, a small gas-rich Gulf state, is coordinating with the US to negotiate with Hamas and Israeli officials over the release of more than 200 hostages taken in the Palestinian group's October 7 attack on Israel. Hamas has so far released a mother and daughter with American-Israeli citizenship and two Israeli women.
Reuters writes that Qatar is now negotiating with Hamas and Israel for a greater release of civilians, and that the talks do not refer to any of the Israeli soldiers held by Hamas. The group says such captured soldiers are a strategic asset that the group can eventually trade for major concessions from Israel.
Two sources in Washington said that the US understands that Qatar is pressuring Hamas to immediately release a large group of hostages and that it does not expect any concessions from Israel in return.
One of the arguments Qatar may be using in its dealings with Hamas is that freeing a large group of civilian hostages would ease the heavy logistical burden on the group as it wrestles with Israel, according to Reuters sources.
Feeding and housing prisoners, as well as caring for those wounded, is a burden for Hamas as it faces an Israeli attack amid food and medicine shortages for Gaza's 2,3 million residents, diplomats and sources said.
Tracking the prisoners, held by several groups in different locations, makes this task even more difficult, three sources said.
A source in the region familiar with the hostage negotiations told Reuters that Hamas did not appear to have anticipated taking so many hostages and had not prepared to hold so many people. Israeli officials said Hamas may be holding many prisoners in a network of tunnels under Gaza.
When his fighters invaded Israel, "Hamas didn't expect that operation to be so successful. Now they have all these hostages and they don't know what to do with them," the source added.
Qatar has also suggested to Hamas that freeing large numbers of civilians could bring diplomatic benefits by showing that the group, considered a terrorist organization by many Western countries, is sensitive to international humanitarian concerns over its capture of children and other civilians, two sources said.
An Israeli official in Jerusalem said Hamas was using the hostage crisis for propaganda, trying to portray itself as humane by freeing a handful of people it kidnapped. That official described it as "Nazi psychological warfare."
After the release of the civilians, Israeli soldiers and security personnel would remain in the captivity of Hamas. Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan said on Saturday that the fate of the Israeli army prisoners was linked to a possible prisoner exchange and that they would not be discussed until Israel stopped attacking Gaza.
Reuters reports that the US priority is to allow more time for negotiations on the release of the hostages.
Israel has agreed to postpone the invasion of Gaza for the time being, so that the US can set up missile defense in that region, the "Wall Street Journal" reported yesterday, citing US and Israeli officials. In its planning, Israel also takes into account the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza, as well as diplomatic efforts to free the hostages, the American newspaper reported.
Washington has advised Israel to delay the ground attack and has kept Qatar informed of the effort as the country seeks to broker further hostage releases, two Washington sources told Reuters on Monday.
Qatar called on both sides to de-escalate and warned Israel that a ground attack on the densely populated enclave would make it much more difficult to free the hostages.
A delicate international balancing act
The talks also thrust Qatar into a delicate international balancing act as it maintains a relationship with what the West considers militant groups while trying to preserve close security ties with the United States.
Qatar also hosted Hamas' political office in the capital Doha for more than a decade. Among the officials there is Khaled Mashal, a member of Hamas in exile who survived a 1997 Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan that threatened to derail that country's peace treaty with Israel. There is also Ismail Haniyeh, the supreme leader of Hamas.
The US imposed sanctions on Mashal in 2003 because he was "responsible for overseeing operations to assassinate, bomb and kill Israeli settlers". Washington imposed the sentence on Hania in 2018, saying he has "close ties to Hamas' military wing and is an advocate of armed struggle, including against civilians."
Hosting the Hamas leader has drawn scrutiny from Qatar, both in the past and after the attack more than two weeks ago.
However, the Joe Biden administration has repeatedly praised Qatar for its efforts in working to free the hostages, and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Doha during a recent shuttle diplomacy visit to the region.
"Qatar is a long-standing partner of ours who is responding to our request because I think they believe that innocent civilians should be freed," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday.
Meanwhile, Qatar's ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, channeled wider anger in the Arab world over Israel's relentless airstrikes and siege of the Gaza Strip following the October 7 attacks.
During last year's World Cup in Qatar, Palestinian flags were displayed and Israeli journalists were sometimes harassed.
"It is unacceptable for Israel to get an unconditional green light and license to kill, just as it is unacceptable for it to continue to ignore the reality of occupation, siege and settlement," Sheikh Tamim said Tuesday in a speech to Qatar's Shura Council, an advisory and legislative body.
He condemned the siege of Gaza, saying that "in our time it should not be allowed" to cut off water and prevent the supply of medicine and food to the entire population as a weapon.
AP writes that Qatar has always watched its larger neighbors Saudi Arabia and Iran with caution. The country faced a years-long boycott by four Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, over the political dispute, which the then-Kuwaiti ruler warned could lead to war.
He has also received harsh criticism from the US and others for his pan-Arab satellite news network Al Jazeera. It has broadcast statements from the late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and has reported continuously on the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes in this war with Hamas, including images of the dead and dying that have fueled demonstrations across the Middle East and around the world.
However, that concern about larger powers has led Qatar to balance the risks through its diplomacy and host the headquarters of the US military's Central Command at its sprawling Al-Udeid Air Base. The US considers Qatar a major non-NATO ally, and Doha has extensive trade and security cooperation with America, including priority delivery for certain military sales.
The Al-Udeid base served as a key hub in America's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, while Qatar also played host to Taliban officials with whom Washington previously negotiated an end to America's longest war.
AP reminds that Qatar recently agreed to transfer slightly less than six billion dollars of Iranian assets that were frozen in South Korea to Doha as part of the September exchange of prisoners between Tehran and the US. After the Hamas attack, Qatar and the US agreed not to respond to any requests from Tehran to access those funds for humanitarian purposes as originally planned, at least for now.
That infuriated sanctions-hit Iran and forced Qatar to "walk the tightrope of international relations," said David B. Roberts, who has long studied Qatar as an associate professor at King's College London.
"The reality is that it's very clear that so many senior government officials in Israel and America want Qatar to play this role and ... Qatar will end up being seen in a very positive light for trying to release the hostages," Roberts said.
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