US, Qatar Eye Israel-Hamas Truce Deal Within Days
A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas could start within days and last through Ramadan, US President Joe Biden said, with Qatar expressing hope on Tuesday that ongoing negotiations would produce a deal before the Muslim fasting month.
As a dire humanitarian crisis unfolds in the war-battered Gaza Strip, the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA accused Israel of “systematically” blocking aid access to the territory’s north.
In the protracted bid to broker a truce nearly five months into the devastating war, mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been putting proposals to the parties.
They are seeking a six-week halt to the fighting and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza since Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel sparked the war.
“My hope is by next Monday we’ll have a ceasefire,” Biden said.
“We’re close, we’re not done yet.”
The truce deal could include the release of several hundred Palestinian detainees held by Israel, media reports suggest.
Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said Doha was “hopeful, not necessarily optimistic, that we can announce something” before Thursday.
“Till now we don’t have an agreement,” Ansari told a briefing, but “we are going to push for a pause before the beginning of Ramadan” which starts on March 10 or 11, depending on the lunar calendar.
“We are all aiming towards that target, but the situation is still fluid on the ground.”
There has been huge international pressure, including from the United States, for Israel to hold off on sending troops into Rafah, where nearly 1.5 million Palestinian civilians have sought refuge from the fighting.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stressed that any truce would delay, not prevent, a ground invasion of Rafah in Gaza’s far south, which he said was necessary to achieve “total victory” over Hamas.
– Truce could be ‘renewed’ –
Israel’s military campaign has killed at least 29,878 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of around 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also took about 250 Israeli and foreign hostages, 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 31 presumed dead, according to Israel.
Biden said an agreement “in principle” was in reach for a temporary truce to last through the Muslim holy month of Ramadan “in order to give us time to get all the hostages out”.
Netanyahu has faced increasing public pressure over the fate of the remaining hostages, and Israeli municipal elections on Tuesday could offer a gauge of the public mood.
A Hamas source, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, said the proposed 42-day truce could potentially be “renewed”.
Hamas has been pressing for a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza — a demand rejected by Netanyahu.
But the Hamas source said the Israeli military may leave “cities and populated areas”, allowing the return of some displaced Palestinians, excluding men between the ages of 18 and 50.
France has said Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani — whose country hosts Hamas’s political leadership and helped broker a one-week truce in November — was due Tuesday in Paris, where negotiators have met earlier this month.
