©Reuters. Palestinians walk past destroyed houses, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip February 22, 2024. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa/File Photo
By Dan Williams, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jeff Mason
JERUSALEM/CAIRO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden said he hopes to achieve a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza by next Monday, as the warring sides appear to be moving closer to a deal during negotiations in Qatar who also aim to mediate the release of the hostages.
The presence of both sides for so-called proximity talks – meeting mediators separately in the same city – suggests that negotiations are further along than ever after the big push in early February, when Israel rejected a Hamas counter-proposal for a deal of peace. four and a half month truce.
US President Joe Biden has said he hopes a ceasefire can begin within days. “Well, hopefully by the beginning of the weekend, by the end of the weekend,” he said, when asked Monday when he expected a ceasefire to begin.
“My national security adviser tells me we’re close. We’re close. We’re not done yet. My hope is that by next Monday we will have a ceasefire,” Biden told reporters during a visit to New York.
In public, both sides continued to take distant positions on the ultimate goals of a truce, accusing each other of delaying the talks.
After meeting Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Ismail Haniyeh, the reclusive Hamas leader, said his group embraced mediators’ efforts to find an end to the war, and accused Israel of stalling while the inhabitants of Gaza die under siege.
“We will not allow the enemy to use the negotiations as cover for this crime,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was ready for a deal and that it was now up to Hamas to abandon demands he described as “outlandish” and “from another planet.”
“Obviously, we want this deal if we can get it. It’s up to Hamas. Now it’s really their decision,” he told US network Fox News. “They need to come back to reality.”
Al Thani’s office said Al Thani and the Hamas chief discussed Qatar’s efforts to broker an “immediate and permanent ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.”
Earlier, a source told Reuters that an Israeli working delegation, made up of personnel from the army and the Mossad spy agency, had flown to Qatar, tasked with setting up an operations center to support negotiations there. Its mission would include monitoring proposed Palestinian militants that Hamas wants to free as part of a hostage release deal, the source said.
Israel continues to publicly maintain that it will not end the war until Hamas is eradicated, while Hamas says it will not release the hostages without an agreement on ending the war.
“We are totally committed to wiping Hamas off the face of the Earth,” Israeli Economy and Industry Minister Nir Barkat told Reuters at a conference in the United Arab Emirates, where his presence signaled continued acceptance of Israel by the Arab states which has angered Palestinian militants.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters on Monday that any ceasefire agreement would require “the guarantee of an end to the aggression, the withdrawal of the occupation, the return of displaced persons, the entry of aid, shelter and reconstruction equipment”.
Israel is under pressure from its main ally, the United States, to agree a truce soon to avert a threatened Israeli attack on Rafah, the city in southern Gaza where more than half of the country’s 2.3 million people are taking refuge. enclave, which Washington fears could become a disaster. bloodbath.
“WE’LL GO IN”
Netanyahu insisted that the assault on Rafah was still planned and that Israel had a plan to evacuate civilians from the dangerous areas. Asked whether Israel would attack even if Washington asked it not to, Netanyahu said: “Well, we’ll go in. We’ll make our own decisions, of course, but we’ll go in with the idea of having civilian evacuations as well.”
But the momentum behind the talks appears to have grown since Friday, when Israeli officials discussed the terms of a deal on the release of hostages in Paris with delegations from the United States, Egypt and Qatar, but not with Hamas.
The White House said it had reached “an understanding” on the contours of a hostage deal, although negotiations were still ongoing. The Israeli delegation briefed Netanyahu’s war cabinet on Saturday evening.
Egyptian security sources said that proximity talks will be held this week between delegations from Israel and Hamas, first in Qatar and then in Cairo.
Since Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in its October 7 attack, Israel has launched an all-out ground assault on Gaza, with nearly 30,000 people confirmed killed according to Gaza health authorities.
In a development that could impact long-term negotiations to end the conflict, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited civilian control in parts of the West Bank, resigned on Monday.
Mohammad Shtayyeh said Monday he would step down to allow a broad consensus to form among Palestinians on political settlements following the Gaza war.
The Palestinian Authority, recognized by the West as the official representative of the Palestinians, lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007. Washington has called for reforms to the Palestinian Authority as part of a comprehensive solution to govern the Palestinian territories, including Gaza , after the war.