Mediators Egypt, Qatar and Turkey have delivered a sharp rebuke to Israel over its latest strikes in Gaza, saying its action undermines a road map they brokered to implement President Donald Trump's peace plan for the Palestinian territory.
Sunday was one of the deadliest days in Gaza since a US-brokered ceasefire came into force in October, halting two years of war between Israel and Hamas. At least 18 Palestinians were killed with two more on Monday.
In a statement, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey said they “strongly condemn” what they described as Israel's continuous and deadly violations in Gaza that kill women and children.
Calling on Israel to respect the provisions of the October ceasefire, they said its actions in Gaza also “undermine the efforts being made to implement the second stage of the ceasefire agreement, especially after Hamas and Palestinian factions announced their acceptance of the road map, including disarmament”.
Sources with first-hand knowledge of the deliberations among mediators said Egypt, Turkey and Qatar were in contact with the Trump administration to explore the way forward after Israel's rejection of the road map.
“US pressure on Israel to show flexibility is the mediators' only hope now,” said one of the sources. “But it does not work every time.”
Qatar on Tuesday said that efforts were continuing by all participants, including the US, to ensure that President Trump's Gaza plan moved forward.
“The international community clearly knows by now which party is preventing the agreement from being implemented on the ground,” Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari said in a thinly veiled reference to Israel.
The 15-point road map provides for Hamas and its allies to hand over their heavy weapons, military manufacturing facilities, bases, rocket launchers and maps of its underground tunnels to representatives of the three mediators. They will then turn them over to a UN-backed committee of independent Palestinian technocrats.
The Palestinian groups, however, want to keep their personal firearms – pistols in this instance – for self-defence. They also want Israel to stop targeting their cadres and guarantee safe passage for those who wish to leave the strip to live in exile.
The sources said Israel had accepted in principle the rehabilitation of about 10,000 employees of the Hamas government, including policemen, by the Palestinian committee, and the admission into Gaza of an International Stabilisation Force – another part of the Trump plan – to maintain security in Gaza.
There has been no confirmation from Israel on the fate of the employees.
Israel, however, has effectively rejected most of the road map's provisions, according to the sources.
“Israel has conveyed its comments and concerns on the proposed framework to our American counterparts. The version that has been made public does not reflect Israel's positions,” said Doron Spielman, a spokesman for the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The indispensable first step toward any lasting arrangement is the genuine, verifiable and irreversible demilitarisation of Hamas,” he said. “Anything short of full demilitarisation will leave Hamas with the capability to threaten Israel again.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog welcomed the deal as “a very positive step” but made clear that Hamas must be disarmed fully for it to proceed.
Nickolay Mladenov, high representative of the Trump-led Board of Peace – which is part of the American president's Gaza plan – met Mr Netanyahu on Monday to press him to agree to stop military operations in Gaza, according to the Axios website.
However, a statement by the Board of Peace said the meeting was held “as part of the process of decommissioning weapons in Gaza and enabling the transition to civilian governance, and creating a safer future in the region for both Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza”.
The statement also made no mention of Israel's latest strikes in Gaza
“Israel and the Board of Peace share a common understanding of the ultimate objectives. The goal is clear and is not in question: the complete decommissioning of weapons in the strip and the transition away from rule by the gun to civilian governance. Reaching it will be a process. And that process will be set out in the next phase of the work,” the board said.
Mr Mladenov had also addressed Israel's intensified attacks in a post on X late on Sunday. “My team and I are working around the clock with the parties, the mediators and regional partners to de-escalate and create the space for the full implementation of the President's plan,” he wrote.
Israel's effective rejection of the road map repeats the fate of past compromises hammered out by mediators after weeks of tortuous negotiations. That pattern has stagnated the Trump plan after its encouraging start in October when the ceasefire halted the war, Hamas freed Israeli hostages and Israel withdrew behind a “yellow line” that gave its military control over a little more than 50 per cent of Gaza.
Nearly 10 months later, Israel has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians – adding to the 72,000 it killed in two years of war –and its military expanded the area under its control to about 70 per cent of the strip. It is also not allowing sufficient humanitarian aid to enter Gaza or reconstruction of the devastated strip to begin.
The Gaza war was triggered by a Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which militants killed nearly 1,200 people and took about 250 as hostages.
Besides the more than 70,000 Palestinians killed so far, Israel's military response to the 2023 attack has left most of the territory in ruin and displaced the majority of Gaza's two million residents, who now live on a narrow area by the enclave's Mediterranean coast.
