Gaza’s Warring Enemies Cautious over Truce Talks after Biden Says Deal Nearing

Displaced Palestinians wait to receive free food at a tent camp, amid food shortages, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 27, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians wait to receive free food at a tent camp, amid food shortages, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 27, 2024. (Reuters)
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Gaza’s Warring Enemies Cautious over Truce Talks after Biden Says Deal Nearing

Displaced Palestinians wait to receive free food at a tent camp, amid food shortages, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 27, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians wait to receive free food at a tent camp, amid food shortages, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 27, 2024. (Reuters)

Israel and Hamas as well as Qatari mediators all sounded notes of caution on Tuesday about progress towards a truce in Gaza, after US President Joe Biden said he believed a ceasefire could be reached in under a week to halt the war for Ramadan.

Hamas is now weighing a proposal, agreed by Israel at talks with mediators in Paris last week, for a ceasefire that would suspend fighting for 40 days, which would be the first extended truce of the five-month-old war. Both sides have delegations in Qatar this week hammering out details.

According to a source close to the talks, the Paris proposal would see militants free some but not all of the hostages they are holding, in return for the release of hundreds of Palestinian detainees, a surge in humanitarian aid for Gaza and Israeli troops pulling out of populated areas in the enclave.

But it appears to stop short of satisfying Hamas's main demand for any agreement to include a clear path towards a permanent end to the war and Israeli withdrawal, or resolving the fate of fighting-age Israeli men among the hostages.

In remarks broadcast on a late-night talk show after midnight on Tuesday, Biden said Israel had already agreed to halt fighting in Gaza for Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, which is expected to begin on March 10.

"Ramadan is coming up, and there’s been an agreement by the Israelis that they would not engage in activities during Ramadan, as well, in order to give us time to get all the hostages out," Biden said on NBC's "Late Night with Seth Meyers".

Earlier on Monday, Biden said he hoped a ceasefire agreement would be nailed down by March 4: "My national security adviser tells me that they’re close. They’re close. They’re not done yet. My hope is by next Monday we’ll have a ceasefire."

But Qatar, which has acted as the main mediator, said a breakthrough had yet to be reached.

"We don't have a final agreement on any of the issues that are hampering reaching an agreement," said Majed Al Ansari, spokesperson for Qatar's foreign ministry. "We remain hopeful that we can get to some kind of agreement."

Two senior Hamas officials told Reuters that Biden's remarks appearing to suggest that an agreement had already been reached in principle were premature.

There were "still big gaps to be bridged", one of the Hamas officials told Reuters. "The primary and main issues of the ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces are not clearly stated, which delays reaching an agreement."

Israel did not comment directly on Biden's remarks, but government spokesperson Tal Heinrich said any deal would still require Hamas to drop "outlandish demands, in another orbit, another planet".

"We are willing. But the question remains whether Hamas are willing," she said.

Israeli news website Ynet quoted unidentified senior Israeli officials as saying they did not understand "what (Biden's) optimism is based on".

40-day truce for 40 hostages

Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people and captured 253 hostages on Oct. 7, according to Israeli tallies, triggering Israel's ground assault on Gaza. Health authorities in the enclave say nearly 30,000 people have been confirmed killed.

Hamas has long insisted it would release all of its hostages only as part of a deal that ends the war for good. Israel has said it will consider only temporary pauses, and will not end the war until it eradicates the Islamist militant group.

According to the senior source close to the talks, the draft proposal on the table is for a 40-day truce during which Hamas would free around 40 hostages - including women, those under 19 or over 50 years old, and the sick - in return for around 400 Palestinian detainees, at a 10-for-one ratio.

Israel would reposition its troops outside of settled areas. Gaza residents, apart from men of fighting age, would be permitted to return home to areas previously evacuated, and aid would be ramped up, including urgent housing supplies.

In Rafah, where more than half of Gaza's 2.3 million people are now sheltering on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, Rehab Redwan despaired at the prospect of a temporary truce leading only to a re-eruption of fighting. The war's only ceasefire so far collapsed in November after just a week.

"We hope it will be a permanent ceasefire. We don't want to go back to war because war after the first truce destroyed us and destroyed our houses," said Redwan, who fled her home in Khan Younis and is now living in a roadside tent.

"Can you imagine - there's no food, nothing to drink. There are no basics for life."

There could be alarm in Israel too over a deal that fails to bring home all hostages. Male Israelis of fighting age are a majority of those now held since Hamas released more than 100 women, children and foreigners during the brief November truce.

Negotiators must insist on the release of everyone, said Shelly Shem Tov, whose 21-year-old son Omer was captured at a music festival stormed by the gunmen on Oct. 7.

"This is a situation which is inhuman. I keep saying that it's a 'Schindler's List' of 2024," she told Israel's Channel 13, comparing the negotiations to a film about a factory owner who drew up a list of Jews to save from the Holocaust.

"Who gets on the list? It really is counting them one by one, to check how many women there are, and who knows how many wounded there are - and what are the chances of my son getting in?"



UN Races to Feed One Million Gazans after Truce

People walk past trucks loaded with aid waiting to cross into Gaza from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on January 19, 2025. (AFP)
People walk past trucks loaded with aid waiting to cross into Gaza from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on January 19, 2025. (AFP)
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UN Races to Feed One Million Gazans after Truce

People walk past trucks loaded with aid waiting to cross into Gaza from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on January 19, 2025. (AFP)
People walk past trucks loaded with aid waiting to cross into Gaza from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on January 19, 2025. (AFP)

The UN's World Food Program said Sunday it was moving full throttle to get food to as many Gazans as possible after border crossings reopened as part of a long-awaited ceasefire deal.

"We're trying to reach a million people within the shortest possible time," the WFP's Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told AFP, as the Rome-based UN agency's trucks began rolling into the strip.

"We're moving in with wheat flour, ready to eat meals, and we will be working all fronts trying to restock the bakeries," Skau said, adding the agency would attempt to provide nutritional supplements to the most malnourished.

An initial 42-day truce between Israel and Hamas is meant to enable a surge of sorely needed humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory after 15 months of war.

"The agreement is for 600 trucks a day... All the crossings will be open," Skau said.

The first WFP trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south and through the Zikim crossing in the north, the agency said in a statement, as it began trying to pull "the war-ravaged territory back from starvation".

"We have 150 trucks lined up for every day for the next at least 20 days," Skau said, adding that the WFP was "hopeful that the border crossings will be open and efficient".

There needs to be "an environment inside (Gaza) that is secure enough for our teams to move around," so that food "does not just get over the border but also gets into the hands of the people".

"It seems so far that things have been working relatively well.... We need to now sustain that over several days over weeks," he said.

Before the ceasefire came into effect, WFP was operating just five out of the 20 bakeries it partners with due to dwindling supplies of fuel and flour, as well as insecurity in northern Gaza.

"We're hoping that we will be up and running on all those bakeries as soon as possible," Skau said, stressing that it was "one of our top priorities" to get bread to "tens of thousands of people each day".

"It also has a psychological effect to be able to put warm bread into the hands of the people".

WFP also wants to "get the private sector and commercial goods in there as soon as possible," he said.

That would mean the UN agency could replace ready meals with vouchers and cash for people to buy their own food "to bring back some dignity" and allow them "frankly to start rebuilding their lives".

WFP said in a statement that it has enough food pre-positioned along the borders -- and on its way to Gaza -- to feed over a million people for three months.

Vast areas of Gaza have been devastated by Israel's retaliatory assault on the territory after the October 7 Hamas attack last year sparked the war.

The attack, the deadliest in Israel's history, resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 46,913 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.