🔴Live: Qatar 'hopeful' of new Israel-Hamas truce in next few days

A camp housing Palestinians displaced by the Israeli offensive in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, on February 27, 2024. © Hatem Ali, AP

Qatar's foreign ministry said Tuesday that mediators were "hopeful" a new truce between Israel and Hamas could be secured within days, shortly after US President Joe Biden said a ceasefire could start next week and last through Ramadan. Negotiators are seeking a six-week halt to the fighting and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza since Hamas's October 7 attack. Read our liveblog for all the latest developments on the Israel-Hamas war.  

Summary:

• Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said Doha was "hopeful, not necessarily optimistic, that we can announce something" before Thursday.

• Israel would be willing to halt its war on Hamas in Gaza during the upcoming Muslim fasting month of Ramadan if a deal is reached to release some of the hostages held by the militants, US President Joe Biden said on Monday in an interview aired by the US network NBC. He added that a new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas could start as soon as next Monday.
• Israeli officials said Biden’s comments were not made in coordination with the country’s leadership while Hamas official Ahmad Abdel-Hadi indicated that optimism on a deal was premature. 
• According to a senior official from Egypt, a six-week ceasefire would go into effect, and Hamas would agree to free up to 40 hostages – mostly civilian women, at least two children, and older and sick captives. Israel would release at least 300 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the official said. Israel would also allow displaced Palestinians to return to certain areas in northern Gaza, which was the first target of Israel's ground offensive and suffered widespread destruction, according to the official from Egpyt, which is mediating the deal along with the US and Qatar. The Egyptian official said aid deliveries would be ramped up during the ceasefire, with 300 to 500 trucks entering the beleaguered territory per day, far more than the daily average number of trucks entering since the start of the war.
• Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has stressed that any truce deal would delay, not prevent, a ground invasion of Rafah in the far south of the Gaza Strip, which he said was necessary to achieve "total victory" over Hamas.
• In Israel, municipal elections twice delayed by the fighting will be held Tuesday in a poll which could gauge the public mood nearly five months into Israel's war against Hamas.
• Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani – whose country hosts Hamas leaders and helped broker a one-week truce in November – arrived in Paris Tuesday for his first state visit to France.
• At least 29,878 people have been killed and 70,215 wounded in Israeli strikes in Gaza, two thirds of which are children and women, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Saturday. Around 1,140 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks, according to Israeli officials. Around 250 people were taken hostage during the attack and 132 are still in Gaza, according to Israeli figures.

Yesterday's key developments:

• UN chief Antonio Guterres on Monday warned that a full-scale Israeli military operation in Rafah would put "the final nail in the coffin" for aid programmes in Gaza, where humanitarian assistance remains "completely insufficient".
• The Palestinian Authority's prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on Monday announced the resignation of his government, which rules part of the occupied West Bank, citing the need for change in light of the Israel-Hamas war. 
• Israel on Monday filed a report with the International Court of Justice about measures taken to comply with an interim ruling that called on it to prevent Gaza war actions that might amount to genocide, an Israeli official said.
• An active-duty member of the US Air Force died after he set himself ablaze outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, while declaring that he “will no longer be complicit in genocide". 

About casualty figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry:

Gaza’s health ministry collects data from the enclave’s hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The health ministry does not report how Palestinians were killed, whether from Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages or errant Palestinian rocket fire. It describes all casualties as victims of “Israeli aggression”.

The ministry also does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. 

Throughout four wars and numerous skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, UN agencies have cited the Hamas-run health ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.

In the aftermath of war, the UN humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records. The UN's counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza health ministry’s, with small discrepancies. 

For more on the Gaza health ministry’s tolls, click here.

(FRANCE 24 with AP) 

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP, Reuters)