Gaza talks mediator Qatar has said it hoped Israel and Hamas could be brought to a new phase of negotiations for a peace deal in the Palestinian territory following their October ceasefire agreement.
"We think that we should be pushing the parties to stage two very, very soon," Qatar foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said on Tuesday.
"That includes, of course, the issues that are complicating the situation, like the fighters in the tunnels behind the Yellow Line, like the incidents that take place every couple of days," he added.
The so-called Yellow Line marks the point to which Israeli troops have withdrawn inside Gaza. Dozens of Hamas fighters remain besieged in tunnels beyond the line and Israel says it has been targeting them.
Qatar, alongside the United States, Türkiye and Egypt secured a long-elusive truce in Gaza, which came into effect on October 10 and has mostly halted two years of Tel Aviv's genocidal war on the Palestinian enclave.
During the first phase of the Gaza peace plan, initially outlined by US President Donald Trump, Palestinian resistance group Hamas and its allies were due to return all 48 hostages they held captive, 20 of whom were still alive.
As part of the deal, Israel was supposed to release 2,000 Palestinian prisoners — including 250 serving life sentences and 1,700 detained since October 2023 — in exchange for the 48 Israeli hostages.
Most of them have been returned, though over 10,000 Palestinians remain in Israeli prisons.
All but the bodies of two hostages remain in Gaza, Ran Gvili and Sudthisak Rinthalak, but Israel has accused the Palestinian resistance group of dragging their feet on handing over remains.
Hamas has said the process of retrieving the bodies has been slow because the bodies have been under the vast piles of rubble left by two years of war.
"As we have always said, the logistical situation in Gaza would certainly make it difficult to reach this result," Ansari said, referring to the return of the bodies.
The spokesperson added that the return of the remains should not be a hindrance to reaching stage two.
Under the second phase of the deal, which gained UN backing in November, Israel is to withdraw from its positions in the territory, an interim authority is to govern Gaza and an international stabilisation force is to be deployed.
