Israel and Hamas were not ready for a comprehensive peace deal, says Qatari mediator

PARIS – The mediators who helped reach the Gaza Strip ceasefire deal decided to delay talks on more difficult issues, such as Hamas’ arsenal, because the warring parties were not ready for a comprehensive agreement, Qatar’s prime minister said in an interview.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Abdulrahman Al Thani was one of the central mediators in efforts to end the war in Gaza, and the Qataris have maintained close contact with Hamas’ leadership for years.

He spoke to The New York Times soon after Israel and Hamas agreed to halt hostilities in Gaza and exchange all the remaining hostages in the territory for about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

The deal left some of the thorniest issues in the conflict for a later stage, including the future of Hamas’ weapons and how Gaza would be governed after the end of the war.

“If we went for full-package negotiations, we wouldn’t have reached these results,” Sheikh Mohammed said on Oct 10 in Paris. He spoke after a meeting there with French President Emmanuel Macron, and Arab and European foreign ministers about postwar Gaza.

Sheikh Mohammed said Hamas had expressed a willingness to talk about a different kind of relationship with Israel.

“Hamas are actually open to have a discussion about how they won’t pose a threat to Israel,” Sheikh Mohammed said.

Hamas officials, the Israeli prime minister’s office and the Israeli Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Hamas has said in the past that it was willing to agree to a long-term truce with Israel. In March, Hamas’ chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya told US officials in Qatar that the group was open to a five- to 10-year truce, in which the group would lay down its weapons.

More recently, Hamas has maintained publicly that it is opposed to disarmament
. It has suggested convening a Palestinian national dialogue about the future of Gaza, including on the fate of its arms.

Hamas has been significantly weakened by the war with Israel, and there are splits within the group on important questions about its future direction.

Some leaders and members want Hamas to refuse to give up its weapons, even if that comes at the price of renewed war and the deaths of more Palestinians. Others say the group needs to be more pragmatic on weapons and other matters.

By giving up the remaining hostages in Gaza, Hamas traded away significant leverage with Israel with no certainty that it would achieve all its goals in return.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently said Hamas must be disarmed before the war in Gaza can permanently end.

Hamas has long regarded that demand as tantamount to surrender and views armed struggle as a legitimate form of resistance against Israeli control over Palestinian lands.

Mr Netanyahu vowed earlier in October that Hamas would be disarmed
and Gaza would be demilitarised, either through diplomacy or by force.

“Either it will be achieved the easy way, or it will be achieved the hard way,” he said. “But it will be achieved.”

Some Arab mediators have said they believe that they can persuade Hamas to partially disarm as long as US President Donald Trump guarantees Israel will not restart the war.

Sheikh Mohammed said one question that needed to be addressed was who Hamas would hand over its weapons to. He said there was a marked difference between Hamas giving its weapons to a Palestinian authority and the group giving them to another entity.

It is still not clear when negotiations about the outstanding disputes between Israel and Hamas will begin.

Mr Trump’s road map for ending the war in Gaza calls for the establishment of a temporary international stabilisation force.

Sheikh Mohammed said the next step should be to talk about the formation of such a force, which he views as connected to Hamas’ disarmament and further withdrawals of Israeli troops from Gaza.

As the force takes control, the Israeli military should withdraw based on agreed-upon “standards, milestones and time frames linked to demilitarisation”, the US plan says. The stabilisation force should also train Palestinian police officers and help secure border zones, according to the plan. NYTIMES