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.
