As the humanitarian crisis threatens to turn into famine in the Gaza Strip, US President Joe Biden said on Monday he was “hopeful” of a ceasefire declaration next week.
In the meantime, negotiations between Qatar, Egypt, the US, continue. “I hope that by next Monday, we will have a ceasefire,” the US president told reporters last night in New York. “My national security adviser (sr. Jake Sullivan) tells me we’re close, but we’re not done yet,” he explained.
“The trend is positive,” an Israeli official told the Ynet news website, the digital version of the Gedot Aharonot newspaper, on condition of anonymity.
Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, a country at the center of the negotiation — and which hosts the leadership of Hamas on its soil — begins today a two-day official visit to Paris, the French presidency announced.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Sunday that his army would very soon launch a ground offensive against Hamas in Rafah, which he said would allow “total victory” within “a few weeks”. Even if a truce is declared, the attack will not “stop”, he explained.
Israel’s military has presented Netanyahu’s wartime government with a plan to forcibly evict civilians from “hostile zones” in the Gaza Strip, without saying where they intend to take the evacuees.
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