It was the mediation of Qatar which allowed a truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. It was November 24, 2023. Over the course of a week, a total of 105 hostages had been released in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners, most of them women and minors. And since then, the negotiations have produced no results.
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With our correspondent in Jerusalem, Michael Paul
A year after the one and only truce in the Gaza Strip, negotiations are at a standstill. No more mediator. THE Qatar who held this position threw in the towel. At least temporarily. And we no longer know very well where the leadership of Hamas is.
But it seems that all efforts are not frozen. Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet, the internal security service, one of the Israeli negotiators, visited a few days ago in Türkiye for contacts kept secret and in the process a senior Israeli security official revealed to several media here that Hamas would have renounced its main demand: the end of the war in exchange for the release of a certain number of hostages.
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Other avenues also continue to be explored to allow in particular the release of hostages holding American or Russian nationalities. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterates another project: offering five million dollars for each hostage released and allowing the kidnappers to take refuge in a third country.
And all this while the supremacist wing of his coalition now openly advocates the return of settlements to Gaza.
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