The Times of Israel is liveblogging Sunday’s events as they happen.
US envoy Witkoff said expected to attend Doha hostage deal talks later this week
US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff is expected to travel to Doha this week amid efforts to extend the ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas, Axios reports, citing two US officials familiar with the matter.
The report comes after Israel confirmed that a negotiating team will depart for Qatar on Monday on “the invitation of the mediators backed by the US.”
According to Axios, the Trump administration hopes to extend the first phase of the previously agreed upon hostage deal, which ended last Saturday, until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish holiday of Passover.
This appears to be in line with a plan that Israel has endorsed, but which Hamas has so far rejected in favor of pursuing the terms of a potential second phase of the deal, which would require Israel to withdraw fully from Gaza and agree to a permanent end to the war in exchange for the remaining living hostages.
The talks in Doha with Witkoff in attendance will be the first since US President Donald Trump took office, as the first phase of the ceasefire deal was negotiated under his predecessor, president Joe Biden.
Man who climbed London’s Big Ben with Palestinian flag comes down from clock tower after 16 hours
A man who climbed Big Ben’s Elizabeth Tower at London’s Palace of Westminster waving a Palestinian flag early on Saturday has come down after 16 hours, Sky News reports.
Local media reports that he shouted “free Palestine.”
Emergency crews had gone up in a crane to negotiate with the man, and he came down after earlier telling negotiators he would come down “on his own terms,” according to the Sky News report.
One dead, 16 injured after bus overturns in southern Israel
One person is dead and at least 16 others are injured after a bus overturns on Israel’s Route 40 highway, near Kiryat Gat in southern Israel.
Magen David Adom says it declared a man’s death at the scene of the accident, and began providing medical treatment to those injured, including two people moderately hurt and 14 who sustained light injuries.
Qatar calls to bring ‘all of Israel’s nuclear facilities’ under supervision of UN nuclear watchdog
The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that Doha has urged the UN nuclear watchdog to bring “all of Israel’s nuclear facilities” under its supervision.
The Qatari ambassador to Austria, Jassim Yacoub al-Hammadi, delivered a statement on the matter during a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna earlier this week.
Israel has never publicly acknowledged that it possesses nuclear weapons, but is widely believed to have around 90 in its arsenal, according to an assessment from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in June 2024.
“Hammadi underscored the need for the international community and its institutions to uphold their commitments under resolutions of the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the IAEA, and the 1995 Review Conference of the NPT, which called on Israel to subject all its nuclear facilities to IAEA safeguards,” the Qatari statement says.
The Qatari ambassador also appealed for “intensified international efforts” to bring Israel into the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear state,” the foreign ministry says, adding that “all Middle Eastern countries, except Israel, are parties to the NPT and have effective safeguard agreements with the Agency.”