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.
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Norway will close its representative office in the West Bank
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.”
In May, Norway — together with Spain and Ireland — announced they would recognize a Palestinian state.
Cease-fire talks set to enter Day 2 in Doha
DOHA, Qatar — Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al Ansari said the cease-fire talks are still ongoing and will resume Friday.
In a statement carried by the Qatari News Agency, he said “the mediators are resolute in their commitment to move forward in their endeavors to reach a cease-fire in (Gaza) that would facilitate the release of hostages and enable the entry of the largest possible amount of humanitarian aid” into the territory.