Gaza ceasefire talks to resume for 2nd day in Qatar as mediators try to prevent regional conflict

The second day of ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Gaza facilitated by international mediators are set to resume for a second day in Qatar on Friday to prevent the conflict from escalating into a wider regional crisis.

Although Hamas is not directly involved in the talks, representatives from Qatar and Egypt are participating 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 strategies for preventing regional escalation. The renewed efforts to end the Israel-Hamas conflict come as the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 40,000, according to health authorities in Gaza.

Fears of a wider Middle East war have soared since the July 31 killing of Hamas political leader and truce negotiator Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Iran and its allied groups in the region blamed Israel and vowed revenge.

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Haniyeh’s death came hours after an Israeli strike killed Fuad Shukr, the military commander of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, which has exchanged near-daily cross border fire with Israeli forces.

The Gaza war has also drawn in Tehran-aligned groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

The US military said its forces had destroyed a “ground control station” operated by Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels. The Huthis have for months fired missiles and drones at shipping in waterways vital to world trade off Yemen.

The Huthis, like Hezbollah, say they are acting in support of the Palestinians.

Violence has also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Thursday condemned a Jewish settler attack on a West Bank village that the Palestinian Authority said killed one Palestinian and wounded another.

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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.

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.

With inputs from agencies.