US President Joe Biden said Monday he hoped a ceasefire in Gaza could start by the beginning of next week.
Amid a spiraling humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory, representatives from Egypt, Qatar, the United States, France and elsewhere have acted as go-betweens for Israel and Hamas, seeking a halt to the fighting and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
A deal could also include the exchange of dozens of hostages for several hundred Palestinian detainees held by Israel.
Biden was asked during a visit to New York when such an agreement might start, and answered, “My national security advisor tells me that we’re close, we’re close, we’re not done yet.”
“My hope is by next Monday we’ll have a ceasefire,” Biden added.
Representatives from several parties, not including Gaza rulers Hamas, met in Paris over the weekend and “came to an understanding… about what the basic contours of a hostage deal for a temporary ceasefire would look like,” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told.
After the Paris meeting, Egyptian, Qatari and US “experts” met in Doha in recent days for talks also attended by Israeli and Hamas representatives, state-linked Egyptian media said, hoping to secure a truce before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
eople in northern Gaza are risking their lives by fleeing to the south because they fear starving to death due to a lack of humanitarian aid in the north of the territory.
Northern Gaza has been almost completely cut off from aid, with UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini saying that “famine can be averted if more food convoys are allowed into northern Gaza on a regular basis”.
The Royal Jordanian Air Force has carried out airdrops of aid off the coast of the Gaza Strip – the biggest airdrop operation so far to deliver much-needed aid to millions of Palestinians amid restrictions by Israeli authorities on aid entering the territory by road. The aid was dropped at 11 sites along the Gaza coast from its northern edge to the south for civilians to collect, and one French Air Force plane was involved.
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