Key mediator Qatar described the negotiations for a truce in Gaza and an agreement on the release of hostages as being in their “final stages,” and it expressed hope that an agreement might be reached “very soon” on Tuesday.
Qatar, Egypt, and the United States have increased efforts to mediate a truce to free prisoners kidnapped during Hamas’ October 7, 2023, assault on Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly met with top security officials late Tuesday to discuss the deal, according to his office.
“The ball is now in Hamas’s court,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier. “If Hamas accepts, the deal is ready to be concluded and implemented.”
US President Joe Biden and Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi spoke over the phone Tuesday about the need for both sides to show “flexibility” in order to reach a deal, according to a statement from Sisi’s office.
Biden had said the day before Donald Trump’s inauguration that an agreement was “on the brink” of being reached.
The negotiations were in their “final stages” on Tuesday, according to Majed al-Ansari, a spokesman for the Qatari foreign ministry.
“Certainly we are hopeful that this would lead very soon to an agreement,” Ansari said, while adding that “until there is an announcement… we shouldn’t be over-excited”.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, meanwhile, said during a visit to Rome that there was a “true willingness from our side to reach an agreement”.
Hamas’s October 7 attack, the deadliest in Israel’s history, resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
On that day, militants also took 251 people hostage, 94 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed 46,645 people, a majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, whose figures the UN considers reliable.
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