Qatar is continuing its mediation efforts to renew a truce between Israel and Palestinian resistance group Hamas, Qatari prime minister said Sunday.
He added however that the ongoing Israeli bombardment was "narrowing the window" for a successful outcome.
"Our efforts as the state of Qatar along with our partners are continuing. We are not going to give up," Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told the Doha Forum more than two months into the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Qatar was a key mediator in negotiations that resulted in a seven-day truce, which saw scores of Israeli hostages exchanged for Palestinians prisoners and humanitarian aid, until it ended at the start of the month.
Israel launched an indiscriminate attack on Gaza in retaliation to the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion. The Israeli offensive has killed over 17,700 people in Gaza, many of them women and children.
Israeli casualties, in comparison, number around 1,200 people, according to Israeli figures.
"We are going to continue, we are committed to have hostages released, but we are also committed to stop the war," the Qatari premier said.
But, he added, "we are not seeing the same willingness from both parties" and "the continuation of the bombardment is just narrowing this window for us".
Addressing the Doha Forum earlier, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Security Council was "paralyzed by geostrategic divisions" that were undermining solutions to the conflict.
Also speaking at the Doha Forum, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the United States is as responsible as Israel for civilian deaths in Gaza.
"For the United States to block a United Nations Security Council resolution, one should hold the Americans responsible" for the deadly violence, he said.
Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, meanwhile, accused Israel of dragging the region "deeper into the sea of death."
Addressing the forum, Safadi said: "We are facing a difficult moment, a moment that will take us deeper into the sea of death and destruction, and Israel simply feels it can do that – it feels unaccountable."
