Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has arrived in Doha for talks with the Qatari emir, whose country is at the center, on securing a ceasefire in Gaza mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said Abbas would meet Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Monday, but did not say whether he would also meet leaders of Hamas, a group that has long been at odds with Abbas and his West Bank-based Fatah Group.

Palestinian Ambassador to Qatar Munir Ghannam said on Voice of Palestine radio on Sunday that Abbas and the emir discussed efforts to secure a Gaza ceasefire with Israel and ways to increase aid to the territory’s 2.3 million people would speak.

“Qatar plays an important role in international efforts and brokering a ceasefire. Therefore, coordination with Qatar and also with Egypt is particularly important to put an end to this aggression against our people,” Ghannam said.

Qatar hosts Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh as well as another senior leader of the group, Khaled Meshaal, who oversees diaspora affairs in Hamas’s political office.

The visit comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to press ahead with plans for a Ground offensive on Rafahdespite growing international concern about the potential impact on the 1.4 million Palestinian civilians crammed into the southern Gaza city.

The United States, Israel’s main international ally, has warned that an attack on Rafah could be a “catastrophe,” and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that Palestinian civilians in the city had “nowhere to go.”

Egypt warned of “catastrophic consequences” of a possible Israeli military attack on the southern Gaza town of Rafah, near its border.

“Egypt called for the need to combine all international and regional efforts to prevent the attack on the Palestinian city of Rafah,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Mohammed Nazzal, a senior Hamas member, told Al Jazeera that Netanyahu “wants the war to stay in power and he doesn’t want to lose his right-wing coalition.”

“He wants to continue the fighting until the US elections in November [Donald] Trump will win,” Nazzal said.

Israel began its attack on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing at least 1,139 people and taking about 240 others hostage, according to Israeli officials.

After the attack, Israel launched a devastating bombardment and ground invasion that reduced swathes of the Gaza Strip to rubble and killed more than 28,100 people, according to Palestinian authorities.

Talks about agreeing a ceasefire and releasing hostages have so far failed to produce an agreement. Last week, Israel rejected a Hamas proposal and said it would not stop fighting as long as the group retained brigades that Israel said were hiding in Rafah.

A Hamas delegation was in Cairo last Thursday and left the next day after meeting with Egyptian and Qatari officials for ceasefire talks.

While Gaza has been ruled by Hamas since 2007, areas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank are ruled by the Palestinian Authority under the leadership of Fatah.

Abbas’s authority has been largely limited to the West Bank, which is larger than Gaza but also splintered by Israeli settlements.

Previous attempts, primarily led by Egypt, to resolve disputes between Hamas and Fatah have so far failed to end divisions, weakening Palestinian efforts to secure their own state on land now occupied by Israel, analysts say.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials accuse the Palestinian Authority for its lack of control over factions such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, which have called on Israel to lift the blockade of the enclave and end its occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Successive Israeli governments have expanded settler expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories in violation of international law.