Hamas Says It’s Sending a Delegation to Qatar to Continue Gaza Ceasefire Talks 

A child looks on as mourners pray next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
A child looks on as mourners pray next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
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Hamas Says It’s Sending a Delegation to Qatar to Continue Gaza Ceasefire Talks 

A child looks on as mourners pray next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
A child looks on as mourners pray next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)

A Hamas official said Monday that the Palestinian group is sending a delegation to Qatar to continue indirect ceasefire talks with Israel over the war in Gaza, as the territory’s Health Ministry said that 38 people were confirmed dead over the past day.

The Hamas official said teams have been discussing terms for a new ceasefire agreement over recent days in Cairo, including a proposal that Hamas free eight to 10 hostages held in Gaza. But the Hamas official said a major sticking point remained over whether the war would end as part of any new deal.

The talks in Qatar are meant to take place later this week or next, the official said.

The Hamas official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the sensitive talks with the media. Officials from Israel and Qatar had no immediate comment.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in January that lasted eight weeks before Israel resumed the war last month. The initial ceasefire agreement was meant to bring the sides toward negotiating an end to the war, something Israel has resisted doing because it wants to defeat Hamas first.

Since the ceasefire fell apart last month, Israel has blocked aid from entering Gaza and forces have also seized swaths of the coastal enclave in a bid to ratchet up pressure on Hamas to agree to a deal more aligned with Israel's terms.

On Monday, the United Nations humanitarian office warned that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is now likely to be “the worst” since Israel launched its retaliation to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, pointing to the Israeli ban on all supplies entering the Gaza Strip since March 2.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters: “No fuel has come in, no food has come in, no medicine has come in.”

The war started when Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, during the attack on southern Israel and took 251 people captive. Most have since been freed in ceasefire agreements and other deals. Fifty-nine remain in Gaza, 24 of whom are believed to still be alive.

Nearly 51,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians in its count but says more than half of the dead have been women and children.

The Health Ministry said Monday that the bodies of 38 people killed in Israeli strikes were brought to hospitals across the territory over the past 24 hours. It said more than 1,600 people have been killed since the ceasefire collapsed.

Also Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that a Palestinian medic was detained during an Israeli military operation in which troops killed 15 first responders in the Gaza Strip. It was the first confirmation of the medic's whereabouts since the March 23 attack in southern Gaza.

A statement from the Red Cross said it has not been granted access to visit him and did not say how it had received confirmation of his detention. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

The Israeli military initially said troops had opened fire on vehicles that raised suspicion because they were traveling without lights on. It later backtracked after a cellphone video emerged showing clearly marked ambulances traveling with their sirens flashing before the shooting.

The military also said it killed nine militants traveling in the ambulances, without providing evidence. It named one of the militants, but the name did not match those of any of the paramedics, and no other bodies are known to have been recovered.

The military says it is investigating further.



'No Life Without Water': Settler Attacks Threaten West Bank Communities

The Ein Samiyah spring is a vital water source for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank grappling with chronic shortages. Zain JAAFAR / AFP
The Ein Samiyah spring is a vital water source for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank grappling with chronic shortages. Zain JAAFAR / AFP
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'No Life Without Water': Settler Attacks Threaten West Bank Communities

The Ein Samiyah spring is a vital water source for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank grappling with chronic shortages. Zain JAAFAR / AFP
The Ein Samiyah spring is a vital water source for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank grappling with chronic shortages. Zain JAAFAR / AFP

From his monitoring station on a remote hill in the occupied West Bank, water operator Subhil Olayan keeps watch over a lifeline for Palestinians, the Ein Samiyah spring.

So when Israeli settlers recently attacked the system of wells, pumps and pipelines he oversees, he knew the stakes, AFP reported.

"There is no life without water, of course", he said, following the attack which temporarily cut off the water supply to nearby villages.

The spring, which feeds the pumping station, is the main or backup water source for some 110,000 people, according to the Palestinian company that manages it -- making it one of the most vital in the West Bank, where water is in chronic short supply.

The attack is one of several recent incidents in which settlers have been accused of damaging, diverting or seizing control of Palestinian water sources.

"The settlers came and the first thing they did was break the pipeline. And when the pipeline is broken, we automatically have to stop pumping" water to nearby villages, some of which exclusively rely on the Ein Samiyah spring.

"The water just goes into the dirt, into the ground," Olayan told AFP, adding that workers immediately fixed the damage to resume water supply.

Just two days after the latest attack, Israeli settlers -- some of them armed -- splashed in pools just below the spring, while Olayan monitored water pressure and cameras from a distance.

His software showed normal pressure in the pipes pulling water from the wells and the large pipe carrying water up the hill to his village of Kafr Malik.

But he said maintenance teams dared not venture down to the pumping station out of fear for their safety.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, deadly settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have become commonplace.

Last week, settlers beat a 20-year-old dual US citizen to death in the nearby village of Sinjil, prompting US ambassador Mike Huckabee to urge Israel to "aggressively investigate" the killing.

- Annexation -

Issa Qassis, chairman on the board of the Jerusalem Water Undertaking, which manages the Ein Samiyah spring, said he viewed the attacks as a tool for Israeli land grabs and annexation.

"When you restrict water supply in certain areas, people simply move where water is available", he told AFP at a press conference.

"So in a plan to move people to other lands, water is the best and fastest way", he said.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, several Israeli politicians and officials have become increasingly vocal in support of annexing the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

Most prominent among them is Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler, who said in November that 2025 would be the year Israel applies its sovereignty over the Palestinian territory.

Qassis accused Israel's government of supporting settler attacks such as the one on Ein Samiyah.

The Israeli army told AFP that soldiers were not aware of the incident in which pipes were damaged, "and therefore were unable to prevent it".

The damage to Ein Samiyah's water facilities was not an isolated incident.

In recent months, settlers in the nearby Jordan Valley took control of the Al-Auja spring by diverting its water from upstream, said Farhan Ghawanmeh, a representative of the Ras Ein Al Auja community.

He said two other springs in the area had also recently been taken over.

- Water rights -

In Dura al-Qaraa, another West Bank village that uses the Ein Samiyah spring as a back-up water source, residents are also concerned about increasingly long droughts and the way Israel regulates their water rights.

"For years now, no one has been planting because the water levels have decreased," said Rafeaa Qasim, a member of the village council, citing lower rainfall causing the land to be "basically abandoned".

Qasim said that though water shortages in the village have existed for 30 years, residents' hands are tied in the face of this challenge.

"We have no options; digging a well is not allowed", despite the presence of local water springs, he said, pointing to a well project that the UN and World Bank rejected due to Israeli law prohibiting drilling in the area.

The lands chosen for drilling sit in the West Bank's Area C, which covers more than 60 percent of the territory and is under full Israeli control.

Israeli NGO B'Tselem reported in 2023 that the legal system led to sharp disparities in water access within the West Bank between Palestinians and Israelis.

Whereas nearly all residents of Israel and Israeli settlements have running water every day, only 36 percent of West Bank Palestinians do, the report said.

In Dura al-Qaraa, Qasim fears for the future.

"Each year, the water decreases and the crisis grows -- it's not getting better, it's getting worse."