Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a meeting today, Wednesday, with the negotiating team in the ceasefire talks in the Gaza Strip and prisoner exchange with Hamas, in which it was decided that senior members of the negotiating team would join the delegation that will head tomorrow, Thursday, to Doha, to participate in a summit of talks held by mediators with high-level American participation.

The Israeli delegation includes Mossad chief David Barnea, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, and Major General Nitzan Alon representing the Israeli military. It will hold talks at a summit hosted by Doha that will also include CIA Director William Burns, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel.

A new round of indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel will be held in Doha to reach a ceasefire in the bloody war that Israel has been waging on the Gaza Strip for more than ten months, three sources familiar with the talks told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday.

A source close to Hamas and another informed about the file confirmed that the negotiations will begin tomorrow, Thursday, in the Qatari capital, while an American official informed about the talks confirmed that the Director of the American Central Intelligence Agency, Burns, is scheduled to travel to Doha to attend the talks.

For its part, Hamas said it would not participate in a new round of ceasefire talks in the Gaza Strip scheduled for Thursday in Qatar, dashing hopes of reaching a truce that Iranian sources say could prevent an expected Iranian attack on Israel, while Washington said it expected the indirect talks to go ahead as planned.

Hamas leader Sami Abu Zuhri said that the movement "is committed to the mediators' paper that was presented to it on July 2, which is based on the Security Council resolution and Biden's speech, and the movement is ready to immediately begin discussing the mechanisms for its implementation." He added, "As for going to new negotiations, it allows the occupation to impose new conditions and exploit the labyrinth of negotiations to commit more massacres."

While the Biden administration believes a ceasefire is still possible, Hamas is demanding a workable plan to implement a proposal it has already accepted rather than more talks; Axios reported that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed a visit to the Middle East that was expected to begin on Tuesday.

Three senior Iranian officials said that only a ceasefire agreement in Gaza would prevent Iran from directly responding to Israel after the assassination of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh on its soil last month.