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New York:
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday he hoped a ceasefire in Gaza could begin early next week.
Amid the escalating humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories, representatives from Egypt, Qatar, the United States, France and other countries have acted as intermediaries between Israel and Hamas, seeking an end to fighting and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
The deal could also include exchanging dozens of hostages for hundreds of Palestinians held by Israel.
Asked during a visit to New York when such a deal might begin, Biden responded: “My national security adviser tells me we’re close, we’re close, but we’re not done yet.”
“My hope is that by next Monday we will have a ceasefire,” Biden added.
White House national security adviser Jack Jack said that representatives from many parties, including Gaza’s ruler Hamas, met in Paris over the weekend and “reached consensus on the basic outlines of a temporary ceasefire and hostage agreement.” Sullivan told CNN on Sunday.
Egypt’s official media said that after the Paris meeting, “experts” from Egypt, Qatar and the United States held talks in Doha in recent days. Representatives from Israel and Hamas also participated in the talks, hoping to reach a truce before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
A Hamas source told AFP that “a number of new amendments” were proposed on contentious issues, but “Israel did not present any substantive position on the terms of the ceasefire and withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed calls for a troop withdrawal as “delusional” and said any ceasefire would only delay a military incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where some 1.4 million Palestinians live in the rest of Gaza. place to seek asylum.
On Monday, an unnamed Israeli official told news website Ynet that “the direction (of the negotiations) is positive,” and Israeli media reported that military and intelligence officials were traveling to Qatar for further talks on the deal.
The French president said Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who hosted the Hamas leader and helped facilitate a week-long campaign in November, will arrive in Paris this week. truce.
Qatar’s official news agency said Sheikh Tamim met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Doha and discussed efforts “aimed at reaching an immediate and permanent ceasefire agreement in Gaza.”
According to the ministry, Israeli military operations have killed at least 29,782 people in Gaza, mostly women and children.
The war broke out after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack that killed 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to official AFP statistics.
According to Israel, Hamas has also taken approximately 250 hostages, of which 130 remain in Gaza and 31 of them are presumed dead.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
