Israeli negotiators visited the Gulf state of Qatar for the first time in weeks on Friday to resume talks on a ceasefire to end the war in Gaza after weeks of talks stalled.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting was preliminary discussions with more substantive talks to follow.
David Barnea, director of Israel's foreign intelligence agency Mossad, led an Israeli delegation to the Qatari capital, Doha, where he was due to meet with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani.
Ceasefire talks have been stalled for weeks, but Hamas said Wednesday it had exchanged views with mediators on a new way forward. U.S. and Israeli officials said Hamas' revised position could make an agreement possible, but warned that long and difficult talks still lay ahead.
The two sides still need to sort out the identities, numbers and terms of release of Palestinian prisoners to be freed in exchange for 120 hostages, dead or alive, held by Hamas and its allies, as well as the appropriate sequencing for the Israeli troop withdrawal and how much control Israeli forces will have at each stage of the agreement.
Most importantly, Israel and Hamas must agree on a way to resolve the major sticking point that has stymied negotiations for months: Hamas wants a complete ceasefire and a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops, while Israel has vowed to overthrow Hamas's control in Gaza and maintain security control of the territory after the war.
Israel and Hamas are negotiating under a three-phase ceasefire framework announced by President Biden in late May. Both sides have rejected direct talks, calling for back-and-forth diplomacy through mediators from Qatar and Egypt.
Under the terms of the proposed agreement, there would be an initial six-week ceasefire during which hostages would be released and Palestinian prisoners handed over, during which authorities would negotiate an end to the war and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
But the Israeli government is deeply divided over the deal, with some arguing it would effectively keep Hamas in power in the Gaza Strip. While the Israeli leadership has endorsed the proposal, two senior members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government have voiced opposition to it, potentially forcing him to choose between a ceasefire and political survival.
Netanyahu did not explicitly support the proposal for weeks, then appeared to back away from it in a television interview last month, when he said he would not accept an end to the war with Hamas. Following protests from the hostages' families, Netanyahu reversed course and publicly backed the proposal in late June.
Hamas faces a similarly complicated calculation.
Some Gazans have increasingly criticized militants for not doing enough to protect civilians in Gaza and for launching the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel that sparked the war, while others say Hamas is delaying an end to the fighting because it fears its own political survival would be compromised.
And any agreement would require the approval of Gaza's Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, who Israel has vowed to kill for his role in the raid.
As leaders on both sides consider the way forward, Israel's war on Gaza is nearing the end of its ninth month, leaving most of the population displaced, many of them living in tents, and struggling daily to find enough food and water to survive.
Israeli forces continued fighting Friday in an effort to crack down on Palestinian militants in the Shajaiyeh neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip, as Israeli troops intensify their retreat into the Gaza Strip they first seized months ago as they battle a new insurgency by Hamas and other militant groups.