The curtain falls with no results on yet another round of talks in Cairo to silence the weapons in the Gaza Strip.
Nobody spoke of a "rupture", because the negotiations will resume next week and the director of the CIA, Bill Burns, also made a move, who reportedly flew to Cairo and then to Doha to continue negotiations with the Prime Minister of Qatar.
But there will certainly not be a truce before the start of Ramadan, on Sunday or Monday, while Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu rejects all international pressure and reiterates his desire to eradicate Hamas from the city of Rafah, because not doing so, he said, would mean "losing the war".
Meanwhile, the situation along the dividing line between Lebanon and Israel is also becoming increasingly heated, with an allegedly threatening Israeli ultimatum to the Hezbollah movement, later denied by Israel.
In Cairo the delegations of Qatar, Hamas and the United States were withdrawn.
A senior official of the Islamic movement accused Israel of having "thwarted" all the mediators' efforts to reach an agreement.
At the same time, in a note the same movement specified that "the Hamas delegation left Cairo to consult" with its leadership" but "negotiations and efforts continue to stop the aggression, allow the return of displaced persons and bring humanitarian aid to our Palestinian people". Even Israel, which had not sent a delegation to Cairo, saying that it first wanted a list of the hostages who could be released under the agreement, made it a point to let it be known in a roundabout way that continues to negotiate: “It is a mistake to think that the hostage negotiations are over,” said the US ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, adding that “conversations are still ongoing.
There are people coming and going" and "distances are being reduced."
The major differences, however, evidently remain, while Benyamin Netanyahu is determined to go ahead at all costs with the offensive against the city of Rafah and the number of deaths in the Strip has reached 30,800, according to the toll provided by the Hamas authorities.
"Our army - warned the Israeli prime minister - will continue to fight against all Hamas battalions, even in Rafah. Rafah is the last stronghold of Hamas. Whoever tells us not to act there is asking us to lose the war. This it won't happen."
A position which, however, continues to irritate the White House to the point that, according to the Washington Post, the Biden administration appears to be evaluating ways to prevent the Jewish state from using US weapons in the event that it attacks the densely populated area around the city of Rafah.
On the northern front, however, the Lebanese media have reported that Israel has given Hezbollah a week to accept the US agreement proposal, presented in recent days by US special envoy Amos Hochstein and which effectively provides for the removal of pro-Iranian Lebanese fighters from the dividing line between Lebanon and Israel.
The Beirut newspaper al Akhbar, very close to the pro-Iranian Party of God, wrote that Israel has informed "Western countries" that it will wait until March 15, then it will be ready for a military escalation that can lead to a large-scale war.
An Israeli political source denied the ultimatum, stating that "that news is not true, there is no such deadline."
Today meanwhile was another day of intense bombing in northern Israel, as the IDF claimed to have struck what it described as two Hezbollah outposts in Lebanon.
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