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Israel has “essentially signed” a six-week ceasefire that would be used to facilitate a second round of exchanges of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, a senior US administration official said.
However, several obstacles remain before an agreement can be reached, including the hostage-to-prisoner ratio agreed upon by Hamas and Israel and Hamas’ long-standing demand that a permanent ceasefire be implemented after nearly five months of war between the Jewish state and Israel. the Palestinian militant group.
In a sign of the slow pace of the process, an Arab diplomat said Saturday that further technical negotiations could take place in Cairo as early as Sunday. An Israeli official said he was waiting for confirmation of how many hostages remain alive and the identities of those Hamas is willing to release, before sending a delegation to Cairo.
“The ball is in Hamas’ court,” the American official said. “There will be a six-week ceasefire in Gaza starting today if Hamas agrees to release the defined category of vulnerable hostages. . . the sick, the injured, the elderly and women.”
The talks were complicated by a vague announcement from Hamas on Friday that about 70 of the approximately 130 hostages it says it is holding were killed by Israeli airstrikes and shelling.
If confirmed, this would be almost double the Israeli estimate of the number of dead hostages, and would dramatically change the contours of the negotiations.*
Israel declared war on the Islamic group after a cross-border raid by Hamas on October 7, in which 1,200 people were killed and around 240 – including soldiers and civilians – were taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
More than 100 people, including some foreigners, were released in an exchange in late November that also occurred under the cover of a ceasefire, accompanied by a surge in humanitarian aid.
According to Gaza health authorities, the Israeli military campaign has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. The families of the hostages have repeatedly warned that Israeli air strikes endanger the lives of their loved ones.
US President Joe Biden has sought to broker a ceasefire before the holy month of Ramadan, which begins March 10, as a first step towards a more lasting end to the conflict.
He ordered humanitarian aid drops into the besieged enclave, after criticizing Israel for not doing enough to facilitate aid distribution.
The drops will continue in the coming days and are part of “flooding the area” with humanitarian assistance to make it less susceptible to looting, because more aid inside Gaza will make it less valuable, a second American official said.
The US airdrops began on Saturday, two days after at least 100 Palestinians were killed in chaotic scenes near a food convoy in northern Gaza.
Israeli officials said that while they used live ammunition as warning shots near the same location after troops felt threatened, the deaths were caused by a stampede or by aid trucks rolling over on people.
Gaza health officials described the killings as a massacre by Israeli troops.
*The story has been changed to clarify that the estimates refer to the number of hostages who died