WASHINGTON: The White House said on Thursday that Gaza ceasefire talks in Qatar involving top US officials had a “promising start” but that it did not expect to close a deal immediately.
“Today is a promising start,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, who confirmed that the talks opened in Doha involving CIA Director William Burns.
Pressure mounted for a deal to halt the spread of a war that the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said has killed 40,000.
The conflict sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel has devastated Gaza, displaced nearly all of its population at least once and triggered a towering humanitarian crisis.
Ahead of the negotiations, Kirby told CNN the focus would be on implementing details of a proposal that President Joe Biden laid out on May 31.
“That’s when it gets the hardest and the most gritty,” Kirby said, adding “hopefully we’ll make some progress here in the coming hours and days.”
So far, there has been only one, week-long truce in November, when Gaza militants released 105 hostages seized in the October 7 attack in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
A Hamas official said the Islamist movement would demand the implementation of the plan that Biden said would start with an initial six-week “complete ceasefire”, the release of hostages and a “surge” in humanitarian aid as the warring sides negotiate “a permanent end to hostilities”.
The latest diplomatic push comes as the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll in the besieged Palestinian territory had surpassed 40,000 - which UN human rights chief Volker Turk called a “grim milestone”.
“Most of the dead are women and children. This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defense Forces to comply with the rules of war,” he added.
The Gaza ministry, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant casualties, said the tally included 40 deaths in the previous 24 hours.
Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said from Beirut that a ceasefire in Gaza was “necessary” for peace in the region including Lebanon.
“We are all worried about the regional situation,” Sejourne said after meeting parliament speaker Nabih Berri, an ally of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.
France “supports Lebanon, and in this context and in the context of regional peace, we hope for the ceasefire... in the Gaza Strip, which... will be necessary to guarantee peace in the region,” he said.
