Israeli and Hamas officials have downplayed hopes expressed by Joe Biden that a ceasefire in the war in Gaza is imminent, raising questions about whether a temporary truce can be implemented before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins in two weeks’ time.
Basem Naim, the head of Hamas’s political division in Gaza, said over WhatsApp on Tuesday that the Palestinian Islamist movement had not yet formally received a new proposal for a ceasefire since last week’s indirect talks in Paris mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar.
The US leader’s remarks late on Monday that a temporary truce could be implemented as soon as 4 March were “premature” and did “not match the reality on the ground”, he said. Ahmad Abdel-Hadi, a Hamas representative in Beirut, also told a Lebanese broadcaster that significant progress on a deal had not been made.
Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Biden’s comments came as a surprise and were not made in coordination with the country’s leadership. Hamas was continuing to push “excessive demands”, they said.
The remarks pour cold water on comments made by Biden in New York on Monday. “My national security adviser tells me that we’re close. We’re close. We’re not done yet,” Biden told reporters after taping an appearance on NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers. “My hope is by next Monday, we’ll have a ceasefire.”
During the Meyers interview, Biden also said Israel would be willing to temporarily halt its war during the fasting month if a deal were reached to release some of the hostages.
“Ramadan’s coming up and there has 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.
Stemming the bloodshed in Gaza has been a difficult diplomatic task in the nearly five-month-old war sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel in which, according to Israeli figures, about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 abducted. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed almost 30,000 people, displaced more than 85% of the 2.3 million population from their homes and left more than half of the strip’s infrastructure in ruins, according to data from Gaza’s health ministry and the UN.
A November truce in which about 100 hostages were freed in exchange for 240 Palestinians in Israeli jails collapsed after a week, and progress on a second deal has proved elusive. With two weeks until Ramadan – a period in which tensions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often spike, even in quieter years – desperate civilians in Gaza, the relatives of the remaining hostages and international mediators are all aware that time may be running out to broker a comprehensive ceasefire.
The latest proposal under review reportedly includes a 40-day pause in all military operations, as well as the exchange of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hostages at a ratio of 10 to one.
Under the terms, hospitals and bakeries in Gaza would be repaired, 500 aid trucks would enter into the besieged territory each day, and thousands of tents and caravans would be delivered to house displaced people. Civilians, other than men of military age, would gradually be allowed to return to northern Gaza.
The draft also reportedly states that Hamas would free 40 Israeli hostages including women, children under 19, people over 50 and the sick, while Israel would release about 400 Palestinian prisoners, including some high-profile prisoners convicted of terrorism offences.
The number and identity of released prisoners and hostages has to date been a particular sticking point in talks since the first ceasefire collapsed at the beginning of December. Whether female soldiers were part of the first group of hostages released was still under discussion, Israeli media reported on Tuesday.
Hamas’s exiled leadership in Qatar has repeatedly said that it will not release hostages without a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip – demands that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has called “delusional”.
The cautious tone from both sides on the feasibility of a ceasefire was met with dismay by Palestinians trapped in the 365 sq km territory, where a lack of aid, food and water means that one in four people are facing extreme hunger.
Netanyahu has said repeatedly that a temporary ceasefire would not stave off a threatened Israeli ground offensive on Rafah, the southernmost town in Gaza, which has become the last refuge for more than half of the population.
Widespread destruction and continuing fighting across the territory, two-thirds of which is already under Israeli evacuation orders, means it is unclear how or where civilians are expected to flee. Global condemnation of the humanitarian cost of such an offensive has not deterred Israeli decision makers, who say a Rafah operation is an essential element of its goal to destroy Hamas.
A total of 96 people were killed in the past 24 hours, Gaza’s health ministry said, in at least 52 strikes across the strip. The Israeli army said troops had “eliminated” several militants inside a tunnel in a raid on the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, an area which has supposedly been under Israeli control since November.
In northern Gaza, people on the brink of famine have been forced to eat animal feed and even leaves. Aid deliveries, which the UN has warned are a fraction of what is needed, are increasingly not arriving at designated distribution points after being raided by desperate people or armed gangs.
“I have not eaten for two days,” Mahmud Khodr, a resident of Jabalia refugee camp in the north, where children roamed with empty pots in search of food, told Agence France-Presse. “There is nothing to eat or drink.”
Late on Tuesday Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, told Reuters it would halt fire on Israel if there was a truce in Gaza, a welcome development after near daily tit-for-tat fire between the two enemies since 7 October. It is widely feared that miscalculation or conflagration on the disputed blue line between Israel and Lebanon could spark a wider Middle East war.
Qatari mediators also said they remained optimistic a deal could be brokered for Gaza.
“The efforts are ongoing, all the parties are conducting regular meetings,” Majed al-Ansari, a spokesperson for the Qatari foreign ministry, told reporters in Doha. “But for now, while we certainly hope it will be achieved as soon as possible, we don’t have anything in our hands so as to comment on that deadline.”
