US President Joe Biden said he hoped to have a hostage deal in place by this coming Monday, March 4, as Qatar hosted delegations from Israel and Hamas.
The two sides looked to inch forward toward a deal for the release of the remaining 134 hostages in Gaza.
The presence of both sides for so-called proximity talks - meeting mediators separately while in the same city - suggested negotiations were further along than at any time since a big push at the start of February when Israel rejected a Hamas counter-offer for a four-and-a-half-month truce.
Biden hit an optimistic note as he spoke with reporters in New York about the possibility of a deal. The US president also noted that Israel promised not to act in the Gaza Strip during Ramadan, Maariv quoted him as saying.
Mediators taking part in the hostage deal talks have said that, as of now, Hamas is disinclined to agree to the US-proposed deal, Israeli media reported on Monday.
In public, both sides continued to take positions far apart on the ultimate aim of a truce while blaming each other for holding up the talks.
Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause in fighting to secure the release of hostages. Hamas says it will not free them without an agreement that leads to a permanent end to the war.
After meeting Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the reclusive head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, said his group had embraced mediators' efforts to find an end to the war and accused Israel of stalling while Gazans die under siege.
"We will not allow the enemy to use negotiations as a cover for this crime," he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was ready for a deal, and it was now up to Hamas to drop demands he described as "outlandish" and "from another planet."
"Obviously, we want this deal if we can have it. It depends on Hamas. It's really now their decision," he told US network Fox News in an interview. "They have to come down to reality."
The office of Qatar's emir said Al Thani and the Hamas chief had discussed Qatar's efforts to broker an "immediate and permanent ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip."
Earlier, a source told Reuters that an Israeli working delegation, made up of staff from the military and the Mossad spy agency, had flown to Qatar, tasked with creating an operational center to support negotiations there. Its mission would include vetting proposed Palestinian militants that Hamas wants freed as part of a hostage release deal, the source said.
On Monday night, Al-Jazeera reported that, during recent talks in Paris, Israel said it was prepared to release 400 Palestinian prisoners, including some convicted on severe charges, in return for the release of 40 Israeli women and elderly men being held in Gaza.
According to the report, Israel also would allow a gradual return of civilians to northern Gaza, except young men, and would allow a larger flow of humanitarian aid and the entry of temporary shelters and heavy machinery. Israel also offered to reposition Israeli forces outside of populated areas and stop aerial reconnaissance for eight hours a day as part of a potential hostage deal.
Gallant met with hostage relatives
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with relatives of the hostages on Monday, according to his office, and underscored Israeli efforts to ensure the return of the captives.
“We are working around the clock to achieve a framework that will allow the return of hostages. As part of the talks, we are working to maintain pressure on Hamas,” Gallant said.
He stressed that Palestinians would not be able to return to their homes in the northern part of Gaza until such time as the hostages were back in Israel.
“The defense establishment’s position will be clear: the full return of civilians to the northern area of the Gaza strip will only take place following the return of all the hostages,” Gallant said.
“As I have said repeatedly since day one, we have no moral right to stop the fighting as long as we have even a single hostage in Gaza. This position has not and will not change,” he stressed.
He appeared to indicate that not all the hostages were included in the deal.
“Even if we achieve a framework that requires a temporary ceasefire, we will then return to fighting in order to destroy the Hamas terrorist organization and to return all the hostages,” Gallant stated.
Israel has also used its pending military operation in Rafah as a pressure lever. The War Cabinet heard the IDF’s plan to both destroy the Hamas battalions in Rafah and to protest civilians in that city near the Egyptian border. The plan, however, has yet to be approved.
Netanyahu has said that a hostage deal would delay the operation.
Israel is under pressure from its main ally, the United States, to agree on a truce soon to head off a threatened Israeli assault on Rafah, the last city at the Gaza Strip's southern edge where over half the enclave's 2.3 million people are sheltering, which Washington fears could become a bloodbath.
Netanyahu insisted that the assault on Rafah was still planned, and Israel had a plan to evacuate civilians from harm's way. Asked if Israel would attack the city even if Washington asked it not to, Netanyahu said: "Well, we'll go in. We make our own decisions, obviously, but we'll go in based on the idea of having also the evacuation of the civilians.”
Israel continues to maintain in public that it will not end the war until Hamas is eradicated, while Hamas says it will not free hostages without an agreement on an end to the war.
"We're totally committed to wipe Hamas off the face of the Earth," Israel's economy and industry minister, Nir Barkat, told Reuters at a conference in the United Arab Emirates, where his presence signaled Israel's continued acceptance by Arab states that has angered Palestinian militants.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri, speaking to Reuters on Monday, said any ceasefire agreement would require "securing an end to the aggression, the withdrawal of the occupation, the returning of the displaced, the entry of aid, shelter equipment, and rebuilding."
The momentum behind talks appears to have grown since Friday, when Israeli officials discussed terms of a hostage release deal in Paris with delegations from the United States, Egypt, and Qatar, though not Hamas.
The White House said they had come to "an understanding" about the contours of a hostage deal, though negotiations were still underway. The Israeli delegation briefed Netanyahu's war cabinet late on Saturday.
Egyptian security sources said proximity talks involving delegations from Israel and Hamas would be held this week, first in Qatar and later in Cairo.
Since Hamas killed 1,200 people and captured 253 hostages in its Oct. 7 attack, Israel launched an all-out ground assault on Gaza, with nearly 30,000 people confirmed killed, according to the Hamas Gaza health authorities. Israel has said that some 11,000 of the fatalities are combatants.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.