Qatar acknowledged Saturday that prospects for a new pause in Israel's war with Hamas were "not really promising" as Israel rejected appeals to hold off on a threatened assault on the Gaza city of Rafah.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that foreign countries calling on Israel to spare the city, where 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge, were effectively telling the country to "lose the war.".
Truce efforts had intensified this week as Qatar and fellow mediators Egypt and the United States scrambled to secure a ceasefire before Israeli troops enter Rafah, the last major population center in the Gaza Strip still untouched by Israeli ground troops.
But despite a direct appeal from US President Joe Biden earlier this week, Netanyahu insisted the operation would go ahead regardless of whether further releases of Israeli hostages were agreed with Hamas.
"Even if we achieve it, we will enter Rafah," he told a televised news conference Saturday.
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, who has met with negotiators from both Israel and Hamas this week, said efforts for a ceasefire had been complicated by the insistence of "a lot of countries" that any new truce involve further releases of hostages.
"The pattern in the last few days is not very promising," he said at the Munich Security Conference. His bleak assessment came as Hamas threatened to suspend its involvement in truce talks unless relief supplies are brought into the north of the Gaza Strip, where aid agencies have warned of a looming famine.
"Negotiations cannot be held while hunger is ravaging the Palestinian people," a senior source in the Palestinian group told AFP, asking not to be identified as he is not authorized to speak on the issue.
new donors, UNRWA will have to cease operations in April," he said.
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