Israel’s spy chief returns home as ceasefire talks continue in Qatar

The head of the Israeli delegation has returned from ceasefire talks in Qatar, an Israeli official said on Tuesday, but talks there continue amid a new intensive diplomatic effort to find a pause in the fighting in Gaza now that famine threatens.

Warnings from the United Nations that a “famine is looming” have added urgency to efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and brought more humanitarian aid to Gaza. In addition to the discussions in Qatar, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will visit Saudi Arabia and Egypt this week to discuss post-war plans for Gaza and the broader Middle East.

Israeli negotiators arrived in Qatar’s capital Doha on Monday for a new round of face-to-face talks on a possible ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas and other armed groups. Their delegation was led by David Barnea, the head of Mossad, Israel’s foreign spy agency.

Mr. Barnea returned to Israel on Tuesday morning, according to an Israeli official who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. Further details were not immediately available, but Israeli news media reported that other members of the Israeli negotiating team remained in Qatar.

Officials from Qatar and Egypt have acted as middlemen in the ceasefire talks, in part because negotiators for Israel and Hamas do not talk directly to each other.

A spokesman for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, Majed al-Ansari, confirmed that Mr Barnea had left, but said on Tuesday that “technical teams” trying to work out the finer details of a possible deal continued to meet in Doha .

He said that while there had been no breakthrough in the talks, Qatar remained “cautiously optimistic.”

Two senior Israeli officials said the government initially gave its negotiating team an amorphous mandate for the latest round of talks. The team had now been allowed to go into more detail during the talks, they said, but was not given the full leeway it had requested. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to communicate with the news media.

Israeli officials said Monday that a proposal under discussion included a 42-day pause in fighting in exchange for the release of 40 of more than 100 hostages taken from Israel and still held by Hamas or its allies in Gaza . But they emphasized that they expected it would take a long time before an agreement was reached.

Last week, Hamas presented a new proposal that dropped an earlier demand that Israel immediately agree to a permanent ceasefire in return for initiating an exchange of hostages and Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons, according to people familiar with the matter. with the negotiations.

Israeli officials said Hamas’ new proposal contained details that were unacceptable to Israel.

For months, Hamas leaders have publicly called for a comprehensive ceasefire and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Israeli officials have repeatedly rejected the demands and indicated they would only be open to a temporary pause.

Cassandra Vinograd reporting contributed.