Following mediation by Doha and Paris, an agreement has been reached to permit the entry of aid and the delivery of medications to hostages in Gaza, Qatar and Israel said on Tuesday.
In a statement to the official Qatar News Agency (QNA), Doha announced the deal “between Israel and (Hamas), where medicine along with other humanitarian aid is to be delivered to civilians in Gaza… in exchange for delivering medication needed for Israeli captives in Gaza”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed the deal and said: “The medicines will be forwarded by Qatari representatives in the Gaza Strip to their final destination.”
The French president, which stated that 83 were first identified as needing treatment in November, but 38 have since been released or died, said the pills are intended for 45 captives.
The International Committee of the Red Cross will receive the medications on Wednesday after they arrive at a hospital in the southern Gaza border town of Rafah. Then, they will be split up into batches and given straight to the hostages.
The deliveries will go on for three months, and were coordinated by the French foreign ministry’s crisis centre, which purchased the drugs and sent them to Doha on Saturday by diplomatic pouch, said the centre’s director, Philippe Lalliot.
Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s political office, has led negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian militant group, having mediated a week-long break in the war in Gaza in November that included the release of scores of Israeli and foreign hostages.
The conflict followed an unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 that resulted in the death of around 1,140 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also dragged about 250 hostages back to Gaza, 132 of whom Israel says remain there, including at least 27 believed to have been killed.
According to the health ministry of the territory, since October 7, Israeli bombardments and a military invasion have killed at least 24,285 Palestinians, more than 70 percent of them women and children, in the Gaza Strip.
“The medications and aid will leave Doha tomorrow to the city of Al-Arish in the sisterly Arab Republic of Egypt, on board two Qatari Armed Forces aircrafts, in preparation for their transport into the Gaza Strip,” said Majid Al-Ansari, spokesman for the Qatari foreign ministry, in an interview with QNA.
The agreement came about as a result of a meeting with the prime minister of Qatar and a visit by the relatives of the captives, a diplomat briefed on the negotiations told AFP.
“Qatar has fast tracked engagement with Hamas and Israel on the need to get medicine in to the hostages and to civilian Palestinians in Gaza. Both have shown willingness,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of talks.
The diplomat emphasized that the discussions are distinct from larger attempts to achieve a truce and stated that negotiators were working to finalize details and discussing logistics for delivery with international organizations.
