Washington (United States) (AFP) – US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will hold talks with senior officials from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey in Miami on Friday on the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, a White House official told AFP.
Under the second stage, Israel is supposed to withdraw from its positions in Gaza, an interim authority is to govern the Palestinian territory instead of Hamas, and an international stabilization force is to be deployed. But progress has so far been slow in moving to the following phase of October’s agreement between Israel and Hamas, which was brokered by Washington and its regional allies.
Turkey said Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan would attend the talks. Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty would also be there, the Axios news outlet reported. “Turkey will continue to fight determinedly on every front to ensure that what is happening in Gaza is not forgotten, that justice is served,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a speech on Wednesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on December 29, Axios said, as the US president pushes for a longer-term deal. Trump said in a televised address to the nation on Wednesday that the Gaza truce had brought peace to the Middle East “for the first time in 3,000 years.”
But the ceasefire remains fragile, with both sides alleging violations, and mediators fearing that Israel and Hamas alike are playing for time. Israel said it had struck and killed the head of weapons production in Hamas’s military wing in the Gaza Strip last weekend, a move that reportedly sparked Trump to warn of jeopardizing the truce.
Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner played a key role in the shuttle diplomacy that led to the deal to end the Gaza war, which was sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel. The US pair are also involved in talks to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and will meet Russian officials in Miami over the weekend.
© 2024 AFP
