Internationally mediated cease-fire talks in Qatar are expected to enter their second day Friday in an effort to prevent the war in Gaza from spreading into a wider regional conflict. Though Hamas is not directly participating, representatives from Qatar and Egypt are engaged on their behalf.
Meanwhile, Israel’s foreign minister is set to meet with his counterparts from the United Kingdom and France on Friday to discuss preventing regional escalation.
The new push for an end to the Israel-Hamas war comes as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza climbed past 40,000, according to Gaza health authorities. The United Nations chief said he believes the number is accurate, or even an undercount.
Mediators have spent months trying to hammer out a three-phase plan in which Hamas would release scores of hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war in exchange for a lasting cease-fire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. That would likely calm tensions across the region and may persuade Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah to refrain from retaliatory strikes on Israel after the killing of a top Hezbollah commander in an Israeli airstrike and of Hamas’ top political leader in an explosion in Iran’s capital.
Here’s the latest:
BEIRUT — Egypt’s foreign minister said Friday that an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip is needed to stop an escalation that could push the region into a wider war.
Badr Abdelaty’s comments in Beirut came as officials from Egypt, Qatar, Israel and the U.S. are holding talks in the Qatari capital of Doha in an attempt to end the war in Gaza.
Tension has been rising in the Middle East following the killing of a top military official of the militant Hezbollah group in Beirut and of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Iran and Hezbollah blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s death and have vowed to retaliate.
“We confirm the importance of stopping the escalation and that the region does not slide to a comprehensive regional war,” Abdelaty told reporters after meeting with Lebanese Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a key ally of Hezbollah.
“Egypt is exerting all possible efforts, as you know, to stop the escalation and to work to reach as much as possible an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip,” Abdelaty said.
Hezbollah and its allies in the region, mainly Houthi rebels in Yemen, have said they will stop attacking Israel once it ends its offensive in Gaza.
BEIRUT — Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group released a video Friday showing an underground tunnel in which trucks were carrying long-range missiles.
The release of the video, with English and Hebrew subtitles, comes as Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate for a July 30 Israeli airstrike in Beirut that killed the group’s top military commander, Fouad Shukur.
The release also comes as officials from Qatar, Egypt, Israel and the U.S. are holding talks in Qatar in another attempt to reach a deal to end the war in the Gaza Strip.
The video showed what it said is a storage place where several trucks, each carrying six missiles, were driving through a tunnel to a place where an overhead metal gate opened, appearing to show that they were ready to be fired.
Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets and missiles of different types and ranges that it says can hit anywhere in Israel. It also has used military drones in recent months.
Hezbollah started attacking Israeli military posts on Oct. 8, a day after a Hamas-led attack on Israel triggered the war in Gaza. The group says it will only stop when Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip ends.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Norway will close its representative office in the Palestinian territories “until further notice” following a decision by Israel to revoke the accreditation of Norwegian diplomats working there, the foreign minister said Friday.
Norway considers the early August decision by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to be “extreme and unreasonable,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said as he announced the closure of the Representative Office in the West Bank town of Al Ram, nearly 30 years after it opened in 1995.
“This decision seeks to target the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority and all those who defend international law, the two-state solution and the Palestinians’ legitimate right to self-determination,” Barth Eide said. Norway “will do our utmost to ensure that this does not affect our work for Palestine and for a viable Palestinian state.”
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