DOHA, QATAR — Indirect ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas entered their seventeenth consecutive month Monday, with mediators expressing cautious optimism that the two delegations may soon be ready to begin cautiously optimistic-ing in the same building.
The latest round, hosted at a Doha conference center where the carpet has been worn into a visible footpath between the two delegation suites, is described by State Department officials as “a critical window” — the seventy-third critical window since October, by the Department’s own count, though aides clarified that several were retroactively reclassified as “narrow openings” once they closed.
“We are closer than we have ever been,” said one U.S. envoy, who has said this in eleven separate cities and once on a layover. The envoy clarified that proximity, in this context, is measured in floors of the hotel rather than progress on any of the actual disputed clauses.
A bellhop at the St. Regis, asked how long the delegations had been booked, paused and said, “The Israelis get the extended-stay rate now. The Americans never check out, they just rotate.” He added that one mediator from a previous administration still receives mail at the front desk.
Negotiators are reportedly stuck on the same three points they have been stuck on since spring, though sources familiar with the talks say the points have been renumbered four times for procedural freshness. A draft framework circulated last week reportedly contains language about “a phased de-escalation toward a sustainable architecture for further talks,” which one Western diplomat described as “basically saying the meeting will keep meeting.”
The talks have, in the absence of an actual ceasefire, become their own self-sustaining regional industry. Doha now hosts a permanent press pool of forty-six correspondents, six of whom were born covering different conflicts and have aged into this one. A nearby restaurant has added a “Mediators’ Menu” that arrives in under twelve minutes, which a chef described as “the only deadline anyone in this town actually keeps.”
In Gaza, reaction to the renewed round was muted, in part because residents have learned to distinguish between the phrase “ceasefire talks resume” and any change in whether airstrikes resume. “They’ve been resuming since my cousin was alive,” said a man waiting in line for flour, who declined further comment on the grounds that further comment had not historically helped.
An Israeli government spokesman said the country remains committed to negotiations and also to the military operation those negotiations are ostensibly about, which he described as “two tracks that complement each other” in the same way that a treadmill complements a person trying to leave a room.
Hamas, for its part, issued a statement reiterating its longstanding position, then issued a clarification reiterating its longstanding clarification of that position, then went quiet for forty-eight hours, which mediators called “a constructive pause.”
The next round of talks is scheduled for next week, the week after that, and in perpetuity, with U.S. officials saying they expect a breakthrough sometime between the next presidential term and the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first.