Gaza ceasefire talks live: Turkey says negotiations have made ‘a lot of headway’

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Talks are focused on Israeli withdrawal, hostage release and prisoner swap list

Hamas says the indirect negotiations have so far focused on three issues: halting the conflict, withdrawing Israeli forces from Gaza and the hostage-prisoner swap deal, Reuters reports.

Two sources familiar with the talks confirmed to the news agency that sticking points included the mechanism for the Israeli withdrawal, with Hamas seeking a clear timeline linked to the release of hostages and guarantees of a complete withdrawal by Israeli forces.

As we reported earlier, Hamas handed over its lists of hostages and Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged in a swap, and, according to Reuters’ sources, was optimistic about the talks so far.

The list of Palestinians Hamas wants freed is expected to include some of the most prominent prisoners ever jailed by Israel, whose release had been off limits in previous ceasefires.

According to a Palestinian source close to the talks, the list includes Marwan al-Barghouti, a leader of the Fatah movement, and Ahmed Saadat, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Both are serving multiple life sentences for involvement in attacks that killed Israelis.

As I reported earlier, Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan said the indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas had made “a lot of headway” and that a ceasefire would be declared if they reached a positive outcome.

Trump also expressed optimism about progress towards a deal on Tuesday, and European, Arab and other states will meet in Paris on Thursday to discuss Gaza’s post-war transition, with Washington likely to be represented, diplomatic sources told Reuters.

But crucial details are yet to be spelled out, including the timing, a post-war administration for Gaza and the fate of Hamas.

In case you’re just joining us, talks to end the war in Gaza have been bolstered today by the arrival of senior figures from Israel and the United States in Egypt, after Hamas handed over its lists of hostages and Palestinian prisoners to be freed in a swap.

With Donald Trump’s 20-point plan appearing closer than any previous effort to halt the war, delegations were upgrading their presence at the talks that were launched on Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff had arrived in the Red Sea city, sources familiar with the talks told Reuters, and an Israeli official said strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer, a close confidant of Benjamin Netanyahu, was also now there.

They were expected to join the talks, along with the prime minister of longstanding mediator Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.

Israel halts another Gaza aid flotilla as MEPs demand activists’ release

Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo, Miranda Bryant in Stockholm and Geneva Abdul

A Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla aimed at breaking Israel’s naval blockade has been intercepted by the Israeli military, days after the detention of activists on an earlier flotilla led to international outrage and widespread protests.

Nine sailing vessels flying Italian and French flags and a motor ship registered in Timor-Leste were intercepted and boarded starting at 4.34am on Wednesday in international waters roughly 120 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza, the group’s organisers the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) and Thousand Madleens to Gaza said in a statement.

It came as 82 parliamentarians from the Council of Europe parliamentary assembly and the European parliament called for the immediate and unconditional release of activists from the earlier Gaza Sumud flotilla (GSF) held last week by Israel. At least seven of the more than 450 people detained remain in custody, according to Israeli media reports.

“We urge all governments, international organisations and the international community to condemn the interception of the Global Sumud flotilla and abduction/detention of humanitarian civilians in international waters,” the parliamentarians said.

The latest flotilla, which set sail from Turkey, was carrying doctors, nurses and journalists on a ferry converted into a floating hospital, plus medicines, respiratory equipment and nutritional supplies intended for Gaza’s health facilities.

The flotilla’s live tracker said that by 10am on Wednesday all the vessels had been intercepted. A statement from the organisers said the Israeli military had no jurisdiction in international waters and the flotilla posed no harm. It said its crews had been “kidnapped”. The statement said:

This seizure is a blatant violation of international law and defies the binding orders of the international court of justice, which call for unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza. Our volunteers are not subject to Israeli jurisdiction and cannot be criminalised for taking part in a humanitarian mission aimed at delivering aid or for sailing in international waters. Their detention is arbitrary, unlawful and must end immediately.”

The Israeli foreign ministry confirmed it had intercepted the boats and that those onboard would be transferred to an Israeli port to be processed and then deported. “Another futile attempt to breach the legal naval blockade and enter a combat zone ended in nothing,” it said in a social media post.

Turkey’s foreign ministry described the incident as an “act of piracy” (see my last post) and said all initiatives were being taken for Turkish citizens held by Israel to be freed and returned to Turkey, and that it was coordinating with other countries regarding their citizens.

You can read my colleagues’ full report here:

'An act of piracy': Turkey urges Israel to release detained lawmakers who were on Gaza aid flotilla

Turkish officials have called for the release of three lawmakers detained after Israeli forces intercepted their boats heading for Gaza.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition said all nine of its boats were intercepted by the Israeli army as they attempted to approach Gaza to challenge a naval blockade.

Turkey’s foreign ministry slammed the interception as an “act of piracy”, describing it as “an attack on civil activists, including Turkish citizens and members of parliament”.

“This is a serious violation of international law. Our three MPs and all activists illegally detained must be released immediately and unconditionally,” Sena Nur Çelik Kanat, a lawmaker from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling AKP party, told AFP.

Çelik Kanat was among more than 80 members of the parliamentary assembly of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe who signed a letter calling for the activists’ release.

The pro-Palestinian activist group Freedom Flotilla Coalition said the boats were carrying “vital aid worth over $110,000 USD in medicines, respiratory equipment, and nutritional supplies that were destined for Gaza’s starving hospitals”.

Israel has in recent months blocked several international aid flotillas from reaching Gaza, where the UN says famine has set in after two years of devastating conflict.

Turkey says Gaza negotiations have made 'a lot of headway'

Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan said on Wednesday that negotiations to end the war in Gaza had made “a lot of headway” and that a ceasefire would be declared if they reached a positive outcome.

Fidan said the talks in Egypt, in which Ankara is taking part, are focused on securing a ceasefire, exchanging hostages and prisoners, allowing more aid and coordinating a timetable for a withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Iran has released a 19-year-old Franco-German national days after throwing out spying charges against him, the French foreign minister has announced.

“Lennart Monterlos is free,” Jean-Noel Barrot wrote on X, and is due to travel back to France on Thursday, sources have told AFP.

Monterlos was arrested on 16 June in the southern city of Bandar Abbas, on the third day of the brief war between Iran and Israel. He had been cycling alone across Iran on a Europe-to-Asia bike trip, and was preparing to cross the border into Afghanistan.

Iran’s judiciary announced on Monday that the espionage accusations would be dropped.

France, which has multiple other nationals imprisoned in Iran, had condemned Monterlos’s detention as arbitrary. Iran is believed to hold about 20 Europeans in detention.

French couple Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, accused of spying for Israel, have been in detention in Iran for nearly three and a half years and face the death penalty.

“I have not forgotten Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, whose immediate release we demand,” Barrot said.

Kohler and Paris, who were on the last day of a tourist trip in May 2022, are slated to be part of a potential prisoner swap for an Iranian woman held in France.

Mahdieh Esfandiari was arrested in France in February on charges of promoting terrorism on social media, according to French authorities. Iran has repeatedly called her detention arbitrary but maintains that the French couple were spying on behalf of Israel.

But there have been positive signals from France and Iran for a swap, with Iranian top diplomat Abbas Araghchi saying last month a deal was nearing its final stages.

Barrot said in a media interview on Monday there were “strong prospects of being able to bring them back in the coming weeks”.

In March, Frenchman Olivier Grondeau, who had been detained in Iran since October 2022, was released.

South Korea’s foreign ministry on Wednesday urged the swift release of its citizen detained after Israel’s navy seized an aid boat en route to Gaza, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

Organisers of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said Israel intercepted at least three boats and detained the activists onboard, with Seoul’s foreign ministry confirming a South Korean national was among them.

The Israeli foreign ministry confirmed it had intercepted boats entering waters it says fall under its blockade of the Palestinian territory.

In a pre-recorded video posted on social media after the interception, South Korean activist Kim Ah-hyun appealed to her government to demand her release.

“We will continue to request the Israeli authorities … ensure the swift and fair release of our national as soon as possible,” Seoul’s foreign ministry said in a statement sent to AFP.

“We will also actively provide necessary consular assistance,” the ministry added, without naming Kim.

Palestinian journalists and local officials rallied against Israeli attacks on Gaza media workers on Wednesday in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists reported.

Dozens of journalists and Palestinian officials marched towards the city’s UN headquarters carrying coffins bearing the names and photos of journalists killed in the Gaza Strip since the war started on 7 October 2023.

Nasser Abu Baker, head of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, which organised the event, said:

All of them, every single one of them has his own story.

After the speeches, Abu Baker said he would hand over a letter to the UN representative in Ramallah asking for the secretary general António Guterres to take measures “to protect our journalists in Gaza because they are daily under the fire, under the bombing strike, in a very dangerous situation”.

Abu Baker said that his syndicate had reported the killing of 252 Palestinian journalists in Gaza since 7 October 2023.

Here are some of the latest photos of Gaza coming to us through the wires.

Robert Tait is political correspondent for Guardian US, based in Washington DC. He was previously the Guardian’s correspondent in the Czech Republic, Iran and Turkey.

They seemed to be the ties that would for ever bind.

For three-quarters of a century, unshakable support for Israel – in the form of military aid and diplomatic backing, and underpinned by broad public sentiment – has been an indelible feature of the US political landscape.

But Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Michigan, tipped by some as a rising star, detected something had changed as he campaigned in 100 towns and cities across what has long been one of the country’s election swing states.

“There’s no doubt that there’s been a change,” he said. “We’ve now lived through genocide, and that is bound to change public opinion in a pretty profound way.”

Two years after Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023 that killed almost 1,200 – mostly civilians – on the Israeli side and which initially generated a surge in popular solidarity, the views of the American public have indeed undergone a remarkable transformation, polls and analysts say.

You can read more of Robert Tait’s analysis here: Polls and politics point to a sea change in US views on Israel. Will it matter?

Summary of the day so far

It has just gone 5pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here is a summary of the developments so far on today’s blog:

Delegates from the United States and Turkey as well as Qatar’s prime minister have joined Hamas and Israeli negotiators on Wednesday for a third day of talks aimed at ending the Gaza war. Israel and Hamas are holding indirect negotiations in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, based on a 20-point plan proposed by Donald Trump.

Senior Hamas official Taher al-Nounou said on Wednesday that negotiators from his group and Israel have exchanged lists of prisoners and hostages who would be released should a deal be reached during the ongoing Gaza ceasefire talks in Egypt. Al-Nounou also said Hamas expressed optimism about reaching a deal, stating that the group has demonstrated the necessary positivity.

Hamas have condemned Israeli minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s visit to al-Aqsa compound on Wednesday as a “deliberate provocation”. Israel’s far-right national security minister prayed at al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem on Wednesday and called on prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pursue “complete victory” over Hamas in Gaza.

Ben Gvir’s remarks came as Israel and Hamas are deep in indirect negotiations in Egypt to release all remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza and end the war there. Gaza’s Islamic Jihad group, which is smaller than Hamas and also holds Israeli hostages, will also join the talks today.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio is expected to attend a ministerial meeting on Thursday in Paris with European, Arab and other states to discuss Gaza’s postwar transition, three diplomatic sources told Reuters on Wednesday. The meeting, which will be held in parallel with the negotiations in Egypt, is intended to discuss how to implement Trump’s plan and assess countries’ collective commitments.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Wednesday it was neither fair nor realistic to put the burden of achieving peace in Gaza solely on Hamas and Palestinians, and that Israel must stop its attacks in order for peace efforts to succeed. Speaking to lawmakers from his party, Erdoğan said Israel remained the main obstacle to peace in Gaza despite a plan by Trump. Ceasefire talks in Egypt, to which Turkish officials are attending, are critical, he said.

Erdoğan said in a transcript shared by his office on Wednesday that Trump had asked Turkey to “persuade” Hamas to accept his plan for ending the Gaza war. “Both during our visit to the United States and in our most recent phone call, we explained to Mr Trump how a solution could be achieved in Palestine. He specifically requested that we meet with Hamas and persuade them,” Erdoğan told Turkish journalists on board a plane returning from Azerbaijan.

Israel has disputed assertations by a UN children’s agency official that it had repeatedly denied permission to transfer incubators from an evacuated hospital in northern Gaza, adding to strain on overcrowded hospitals farther south where newborn babies are now sharing oxygen masks. James Elder, Unicef spokesperson, described mothers and babies lining the corridor floors of Nasser hospital in southern Gaza, and said that premature babies were being forced to share oxygen masks and beds.

The Gaza health ministry said Israeli fire had killed at least eight people across the territory in the past 24 hours, the lowest death toll it has reported in the past week.

Six South African activists who were detained by Israel while attempting to reach Gaza as part of an aid flotilla said on Wednesday that they were subjected to harsher treatment than other detainees because of South Africa’s role in a genocide case against Israel. Speaking after their return, the activists, which include the grandson of Nelson Mandela, said they were singled out after Israeli guards noticed that they were from South Africa. Two Muslim women among the group said they had their hijabs ripped off their heads and were forced to strip naked in front of Israeli soldiers. Israel’s foreign ministry has vehemently denied any claims of mistreatment, and noted that all activists were given the opportunity to voluntarily be deported without detention.

A new Gaza-bound aid flotilla has been intercepted by the Israeli army, days after the detention of activists on board vessels bound for the war-torn territory caused international outrage and widespread protests. The Israeli military was jamming signals with at least two boats being boarded, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said on Instagram. Turkey criticised the intervention by Israeli forces as an act of piracy and a violation of international law.

Five Irish citizens including author Naoise Dolan are among those who been detained by Israeli authorities who have stopped a second wave of boats heading towards Gaza with humanitarian aid. Ireland’s deputy prime minister Simon Harris confirmed the Irish embassy in Tel Aviv was “actively engaged with the situation” and he expected “all detainees will be transferred to Ashdod port for process and from there to a detention facility south of Tel Aviv”.

A Filipino crew member of a Dutch cargo ship has died from injuries sustained in an attack by Houthi rebels in the Gulf of Aden last week, the Philippine government said on Wednesday. Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the 29 September attack in the busy shipping lane on the MV Minervagracht, causing a fire and injuring two people.

Islamophobic attacks across the US have risen precipitously in the two years since Hamas’s attack on Israel. Last year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) recorded 8,658 complaints, a record.

UK prime minister Keir Starmer will order the home secretary to look at further curbs on protests including potential powers to take action against specific inflammatory chants at pro-Palestinian protests. Speaking to reporters en route to Mumbai, the prime minister said Labour was looking at going even further than the measures announced by Shabana Mahmood, which would look at the “cumulative impact” of repeat protests in certain locations.

South African activists on Gaza flotilla claim harsh treatment by Israel over genocide case