A Palestinian official claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had purposefully sent a delegation to Doha, Qatar, with no real decision-making authority on key points of contention in order to buy Israel time while he visited Washington.

As Israel and Hamas move closer to a ceasefire agreement, Israel says it wants to maintain troops in a southern corridor of the Gaza Strip — a condition that could derail the talks.

While UN and European officials hope that a cease-fire deal would help ease suffering among the Strip’s population, Israelis worry that as in the

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in an interview with NDTV, stated bluntly, "Hamas will not release all the hostages, which is the only asset they still hold" unless it is guaranteed that the war is finished.

President Donald Trump has ramped up expectations around a possible 60-day ceasefire in the war in Gaza after he said Thursday that a response from Hamas was expected within the next day.

It was not immediately clear whether the group was demanding any significant changes to the plan for a 60-day truce, hostage-for-prisoner swaps and talks on a permanent end to the Gaza war.

Hamas has voiced strong opposition to any potential ceasefire deal that allows Israeli troops to remain stationed in buffer zones within Gaza, denouncing

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