Israel and Hamas Were Not Ready for a Comprehensive Peace Deal – Qatari Prime Minister

The Qatari Prime Minister told The New York Times that Gaza war mediators decided to delay talks on more difficult issues so a hostage-prisoner swap could be concluded quickly.

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

The Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, was one of the central mediators in efforts to end the war in Gaza, and the Qataris have maintained close contacts with Hamas’s 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’s 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 Friday in Paris. He spoke after a meeting there with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Arab and European foreign ministers about postwar Gaza.