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US President Joe Biden.
© Leigh Vogel/Imago
The US President announces a possible pause in hostilities early next week.
This does not change Israel's plans to invade Rafah.
Washington, DC - US President Joe Biden hopes an agreement could be reached between Israel and Hamas as early as next week that would see the release of many of the remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip in exchange for a temporary pause in fighting in the Palestinian enclave.
Asked when a Gaza ceasefire might begin, Biden said on Monday (Feb. 25): “I hope by the end of the weekend.
... My national security adviser tells me we're close - we're close - we're not done yet.
I hope we will have a ceasefire by next Monday.”
Gaza ceasefire: Hamas also calls for the release of prisoners
For weeks, Biden and his senior advisers have focused almost exclusively on achieving a weeks-long ceasefire in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of many of the more than 100 remaining hostages.
The negotiations have proven difficult.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought to appease far-right members of his government who have opposed the deal and who have made demands from Hamas that are unacceptable to Israel, including on the issue of releasing Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli ones hostages.
According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, nearly 30,000 Palestinians were killed during the nearly five-month Israeli military operation.
Israel has launched its retaliatory measures in the Gaza Strip after Hamas militants breached the Israel-Gaza border fence on October 7, killing 1,200 people, many of them civilians, and taking about 250 others hostage.
Biden's previous Gaza policy has hurt him politically
If a ceasefire agreement is reached, Israel will continue fighting after it expires and will invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians are seeking refuge in squalid conditions after being urged by Israel to seek safety .
Biden and his senior advisers have made it clear that they oppose an Israeli military operation in Rafah without a "credible" plan to evacuate Palestinians - a task that many experts say is impossible given the destruction in Gaza and the sheer number of civilians being relocated would have to be, is impossible.
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The White House hopes a temporary pause would lay the foundation for a permanent end to the fighting.
Biden's tight embrace of Israel, his refusal to call for a permanent ceasefire and his reluctance to attach conditions to military aid to Israel have hurt him politically, as polls show that young voters, progressives, people of color and Muslim and Arab Americans support his Deeply reject the stance on the war in Israel.
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Ceasefire aims to curb future violence
A crucial test for Biden will come Tuesday in the Democratic primary in Michigan, where activists are urging Democrats not to choose the president but to check "uncommitted."
Organizers of the action hope at least 10,000 people will vote "uncommitted," sending a message to Biden that he should change his policies and call for a permanent ceasefire - a move Biden has so far rejected because he says Israel has that Right to defend yourself by destroying Hamas.
Netanyahu has increasingly resisted U.S. demands and rejected Biden's specific demands, leading to a rift between the two leaders.
U.S. officials hope that a long-term pause will make it difficult to resume fighting on the same scale and that Israel will shift to a more targeted, less lethal military operation.
Protesters in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington on Monday.
© UPI Photo/Imago
Hamas is holding around 130 hostages in Gaza
Early in the fighting, about 100 hostages were freed under an agreement that led to a week-long pause in fighting.
Officials believe there are now about 130 Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip, including about two dozen who Israeli authorities believe are already dead.
About half a dozen of the remaining hostages have U.S. citizenship.
If there is a break in fighting for several weeks, U.S. officials hope it will provide an opportunity to finally end the war that has drawn criticism of Israel and the United States around the world.
However, Netanyahu has stated that Israel would resume fighting after such a break.
Speaking on
CBS
' "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Netanyahu said of a hostage deal: "We're all working on it.
We want it, I want it.”
Netanyahu speaks of Rafah invasion as the final phase: “Completed in a few weeks”
Asked whether an agreement was within reach, Netanyahu said: “Hamas started with crazy demands.
It's too early to tell if she's given up on those, but if she's given up on them and going into what's called the ballpark - they're not even in the city, they're on another planet - but If they agree to a reasonable situation, then yes, we have a hostage deal.
I hope so."
Netanyahu also indicated that an invasion of Rafah would be the final phase of all-out fighting.
“Once we start the operation in Rafah, the intense phase of fighting will be over in a few weeks,” he told
CBS
.
“Not months, but weeks before the end.”
About the author
Yasmeen Abutaleb
is a White House reporter at The Washington Post.
She joined The Post in 2019 as a national health policy reporter.
Yasmeen Abutaleb is co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration Response to the Pandemic that Changed History.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on February 27, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.