Biden hopes Israel and Hamas will agree to ceasefire in Gaza in coming days

President Joe Biden has for the first time set a date for the possibility of a second truce in Gaza: “My hope is that by next Monday we will have a ceasefire.”

The United States is one of the mediating countries in the negotiations that have gained momentum in recent days and from which a proposal has emerged that Hamas is currently studying: six weeks of ceasefire to exchange 40 (of the more than 130) hostages in the Strip for the release of 400 Palestinian prisoners and an increase in humanitarian aid to a hungry Gaza.

Mayed al Ansari, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Qatar, where the dialogue takes place this Tuesday, has expressed himself as “optimistic.”

Israel and Hamas, not so much.

“My national security advisor [Jake Sullivan] tells me we are close.

“We are close, although we are not finished,” Biden told a group of journalists in New York on Monday.

The statements confirm that the parties are gradually reducing their differences regarding a second ceasefire, after the one that lasted a week last November, in contrast to the public statements of their leaders, which in the Israeli case have a lot of meaning. warming up for the elections that will probably be held this year.

At the beginning of the month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as “delusional” that Hamas demanded a 135-day ceasefire, the release of up to 1,500 Palestinian prisoners and the indirect negotiation of a definitive end to the war in exchange for the handover. of all the hostages.

Two weeks ago, in fact, he ordered the negotiating delegation to stay in the country because Hamas maintained its demands.

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Since then, both sides have blamed each other for the stagnation.

On Sunday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniye claimed the “seriousness and a lot of flexibility” they are showing and regretted that Israel “drags its feet.”

Netanyahu, on the other hand, put the ball in the Islamists' court and pointed out that they live “on another planet” with their demands.

This Monday, in fact, he issued a statement - in which he announced the presentation of a military plan to evacuate the population of Rafah, in the south of the Strip, in the face of the invasion - that seems more aimed at pressuring them to make concessions. than to inform the public.

Far from the microphones, however, a meeting last Friday in Paris between the Israeli side and the three mediators (Qatar, Egypt and the United States) shed light on the proposal that Hamas is now analyzing.

It consists of six weeks of ceasefire to exchange 40 civilian hostages: women, children under 19, over 50 and the sick.

In exchange, Israel would release 400 Palestinian prisoners (a ratio three times higher than that of the first exchange, but well below previous ones), allow more humanitarian aid to Gaza, relocate troops and allow them to return to see the state of their homes. to residents of evacuated areas who are not of combat age, reports the Reuters agency.

An official Israeli source has indicated to Channel 12 television that he expects Hamas to reject the proposal and has spoken only of “slow progress,” while an Islamist official has clarified that “there are still many positions to be approached.”

In any case, the current format of dialogue, known as proximity conversations, is usually only applied when there are general lines of agreement and more progress is made in the details.

The representatives of Israel and Hamas do not meet directly, but they are in the same city and meet separately with the mediators, which speeds up the process.

The importance of Ramadan

One of the elements that drives the dialogue is the proximity of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in which tensions in the Middle East usually arise.

This year, it starts on March 10.

There was already an escalation of violence last year, after the police violently penetrated the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem twice.

This year, the feeling is that it could be the perfect storm for all the tension accumulated among the Palestinians to break out due to the sum of the 30,000 deaths in Gaza, an unprecedented number of fatalities from raids and attacks by settlers in the West Bank and the loss of the economic support of tens of thousands of construction and agricultural laborers, who have had work permits in Israel and the Jewish settlements frozen since the massive attack by Hamas on October 7.

Even more so when, according to Israeli media, Netanyahu supports the proposal of his head of National Security, the far-right Itamar Ben Gvir, to broadly limit access to the Esplanade of the Mosques even to Israelis of the Muslim confession, close to 20% of the population.

There is still no official decision on the matter.

Ramadan is already a month of celebration in Islam, so the United States is pushing for it to be accompanied by a ceasefire and reunions with released inmates.

Washington wants to first reach a temporary cessation of hostilities and then negotiate a definitive one and convince Israel not to resume bombing.

“There is an understanding that the month-and-a-half pause would be used not only to regulate life in Gaza, but also for talks about a global agreement, which the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel want,” Israeli sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. the negotiation to the

Maariv

newspaper .

These sources spoke of a permanent pact to end the war whereby Hamas stops controlling Gaza, its leaders and commanders go into exile to another country and the militants hand over their weapons.

Precisely, the resignation on the eve of the Government of the Palestinian National Authority paves the way for the formation of an Executive of technocrats that can resume control of Gaza, in the hands exclusively of Hamas since 2007. This is what the United States intends and Israel rejects. .

Netanyahu publicly insists that no ceasefire, no matter how long, will mean the end of the war, but rather a pause towards “total victory,” which involves invading Rafah, after the forced evacuation of more than a million Palestinians displaced there. .

On Sunday, he ventured that the “intense combat phase” will last “a few weeks, not months,” once troops enter Rafah.

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