Qatar, Egypt say Haniyeh assassination damages Gaza truce chances

Dubai — Qatar and Egypt, which have acted as mediators in ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, suggested on Wednesday that the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh could jeopardise efforts to secure a truce in Gaza.

“Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani wrote on X.

“Peace needs serious partners & a global stance against the disregard for human life.”

Sheikh Mohammed, who is also foreign minister, later spoke with US secretary of state Antony Blinken over the phone and discussed continuing work towards a ceasefire.

Egypt’s foreign ministry said in a statement that a “dangerous Israeli escalation policy” over the past two days had undermined efforts to broker an end to the fighting in Gaza.

“The coincidence of this regional escalation with the lack of progress in the ceasefire negotiations in Gaza increases the complexity of the situation and indicates the absence of Israeli political will to calm it down,” the statement said.

“It undercuts the strenuous efforts made by Egypt and its partners to stop the war in the Gaza Strip and put an end to the human suffering of the Palestinian people,” it added.

Qatar, Egypt and the US have repeatedly tried to clinch a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed more than 39,000 Palestinians since Hamas-led militants attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.

No sign of progress

A final deal to halt more than nine months of war has been complicated by changes sought by Israel, sources have told Reuters, and there was no sign of progress at the latest round of talks in Rome on Sunday.

Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant stressed the importance of continuing to work towards reaching a deal to release the remaining 115 Israeli and foreign hostages in a phone call with his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Khaled Meshaal is tipped to be the new Hamas leader. He rose to global prominence in 1997 after Israeli agents injected him with poison in a botched assassination attempt on a street outside his office in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

The hit against a key senior figure of the Palestinian militant group, ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, so enraged Jordan’s then-King Hussein that he spoke of hanging the would-be killers and scrapping Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel unless the antidote was handed over. Israel did so, and also agreed to free Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, only to assassinate him seven years later in Gaza.

For Israelis and Western states, the Iran-backed Hamas, which has directed suicide bombings in Israel and fought frequent wars against it, is a terrorist group bent on Israel’s destruction.

For Palestinian supporters, Meshaal and the rest of the Hamas leadership are fighters for liberation from Israeli occupation, keeping their cause alive when international diplomacy has failed them.

Meshaal, 68, became Hamas’ political leader in exile the year before Israel tried to eliminate him, a post that enabled him to represent the Palestinian Islamist group at meetings with foreign governments around the world, unhindered by tight Israeli travel restrictions that affected other Hamas officials.

Reuters