Israel said Saturday it was withdrawing its negotiating team from the Doha talks in Qatar on extending the ceasefire with Hamas, citing an “impasse.”
According to a statement issued by Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the order to the team, led by Mossad chief David Barnea, to return to Israel. The Mossad team spent about a week in Qatar to take part in talks aimed at achieving a temporary pause in the deadly conflict.
The Mossad’s statement attributed the decision to the “impasse in the negotiations.” The Mossad accused Hamas of failing to fulfil its obligations under the truce agreement, “which included the release of all children and women according to a list that was forwarded to Hamas and approved by it.”
The collapse of a seven-day ceasefire on Friday marked a resurgence of hostilities, with Israel resuming strikes in Gaza, killing at least 193 people, and Hamas launching rockets at Israel without causing any casualties.
During the ceasefire, Israel released 240 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Meanwhile as Gaza residents used the 7-day truce that ended Friday to find aid, search for loved ones under the rubble, and head home to survey the destruction, a particularly disturbing scene emerged.
Seen in a video that moves through the abandoned and disarrayed hallways of the pediatric intensive care unit at Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital in northern Gaza were several babies whose unattended bodies lay on separate hospital beds. A blurred version of the video was shared widely on social media this week, a grim and graphic contrast to other scenes of families reunited as hostages and prisoners were freed.
In a piece he reported, Mohammed Baalousha, a journalist with the Emirati TV channel Al-Mashhad, said he found the decomposing infants when he entered the pediatric ICU in the health facility in Gaza City. The hospital’s staff and critically ill patients were forced to evacuate in early November as the Israeli military focused its ground assault on the city, with hospitals under fire. With agency reports
