“Right now, the ball is in Hamas’s court,” the U.S. official said.
Washington:
Israel has broadly accepted a six-week ceasefire in Gaza and now needs Hamas to agree to release the most vulnerable hostages for the deal to take effect, a senior U.S. official said on Saturday.
“There is a framework agreement. The Israelis have more or less accepted it,” the Biden administration official told reporters by phone on condition of anonymity.
“Now, the ball is in Hamas’s court.”
Negotiators from regional powers are working “around the clock” to secure a deal before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is expected to begin in about a week.
The official added: “A six-week ceasefire will be imposed in Gaza starting today if Hamas agrees to release specific categories of vulnerable hostages…the sick, the wounded, the elderly and women.”
“I just want to emphasize that if Hamas solves the last problem, we will have a ceasefire.”
U.S. officials hope such a deal would create space for a “more durable” peace solution between Israel and Hamas, which has been at war since the Palestinian militant group attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
A Hamas delegation is expected to fly to Cairo on Saturday for truce talks, a source close to Hamas told AFP.
The ceasefire will also see a “significant increase” in humanitarian aid to Gaza, with the United Nations warning of imminent famine in the northern part of the besieged region.
The United States announced early Saturday that it had airdropped the first batch of aid to Gaza after a fatal incident at an aid station on Thursday that killed more than 100 Palestinians.
But U.S. officials say that does not replace the need to get as much aid as possible to Gaza by land.
“None of these – sea corridors, airdrops – can replace the basic need to deliver aid through as many land crossings as possible. This is the most efficient way to deliver aid at scale,” another U.S. official told reporters on the 12th . Conditions of anonymity.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
