Joe Biden says Israel agrees to stop Gaza attacks during Ramadan if hostage deal is reached with Hamas

In short: Joe Biden says Israel would halt its war in Gaza during the month of Ramadan if Hamas agrees to its latest proposal for a prisoner-hostage exchange.

The US president is hopeful Israel and Hamas will agree to a ceasefire within days.

What’s next? Benjamin Netanyahu insists Israel’s planned assault on Rafah will go ahead and it has plans to evacuate civilians from harm’s way.

US President Joe Biden says Israel has agreed to halt military activities in Gaza for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan if Hamas accepts its prisoner-hostage exchange deal.

A senior source close to truce talks in Paris told Reuters that Israel’s draft proposal — which suggests trading 10 Palestinian prisoners for every Israeli hostage — is the most serious attempt in weeks to formalise a ceasefire.

The source said the deal would also allow hospitals and bakeries in Gaza to be repaired during the four weeks of Ramadan, which is expected to begin on March 10 and end on April 9.

“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,” Mr Biden said during an appearance on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers.

He also warned that Israel risked losing international support due to the high death toll among Palestinians, adding that Israel had committed to make it possible for Palestinians to evacuate from Rafah in Gaza’s south before intensifying its campaign against Hamas.

Mr Biden, whose remarks were recorded on Monday and broadcast on Tuesday, said there was an agreement in principle for a ceasefire between the two sides while hostages were released.

He said he hoped to have a ceasefire in Gaza by next Monday.

The president’s comments come amid negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Qatar.

Earlier, a US official said US negotiators had been pushing hard to get a pause-for-hostages deal, and top American officials were working on the issue last week.

The optimism appeared to grow out of meetings between the Israelis and Qataris, the official said.

Image of Joe Biden talking, he is wearing a blue suit with a tie with tiny donkeys on it. Behind him are green leaves .

US President Joe Biden says a ceasefire agreement is close.(Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein)

In public, both sides continued to take positions far apart on the ultimate aims of a truce, while blaming each other for holding up the talks.

After meeting Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, Hamas’ reclusive leader Ismail Haniyeh said his group had embraced mediators’ efforts to find an end to the war and he accused Israel of stalling while Gazans died under siege.

“We will not allow the enemy to use negotiations as a cover for this crime,” he said.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government was ready for a deal, and it was now up to Hamas to drop demands he described as “outlandish” and “from another planet”.

“Obviously, we want this deal if we can have it,” he told US network Fox News.

“It depends on Hamas. It’s really now their decision. They have to come down to reality.”

The desperate search for food in Gaza

In Gaza, Maazize is feeding her children ground up animal food and tea made from sticks and leaves, just so they have something in their starving stomachs.

The emir’s office said he and the Hamas chief had discussed Qatar’s efforts to broker an “immediate and permanent ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip”.

Earlier, a source told Reuters that an Israeli working delegation made up of staff from the military and the Mossad spy agency had flown to Qatar, tasked with creating an operational centre to support negotiations there.

Its mission would include vetting proposed Palestinian militants that Hamas wanted freed as part of a hostage release deal, the source said.

Israel continues to maintain in public that it will not end the war until Hamas is eradicated, while Hamas says it will not free hostages without an agreement on an end to the war.

“We’re totally committed to wipe Hamas off the face of the Earth,” Israeli Economy and Industry Minister Nir Barkat told Reuters at a conference in the United Arab Emirates.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters on Monday any ceasefire agreement would require “securing an end to the aggression, the withdrawal of the occupation, the returning of the displaced, the entry of aid, shelter equipment, and rebuilding”.

‌’We make our own decisions’

Israel is under pressure from the United States to agree on a truce soon to head off a threatened Israeli assault on Rafah, the city in southern Gaza where more than half the enclave’s 2.3 million people are sheltering.

Mr Netanyahu insisted the assault on Rafah was still planned and Israel had a plan to evacuate civilians from harm’s way.

When asked if Israel would attack even if Washington asked it not to, Mr Netanyahu said: “Well, we’ll go in. We make our own decisions, obviously, but we’ll go in based on the idea of having also the evacuation of the civilians.”

But the momentum behind talks appears to have grown since Friday, when Israeli officials discussed terms of a hostage release deal in Paris with delegations from the United States, Egypt and Qatar, though not Hamas.

The White House said they had come to “an understanding” about the contours of a hostage deal although negotiations were still underway. The Israeli delegation briefed Mr Netanyahu’s war cabinet late on Saturday.

Egyptian security sources said proximity talks involving delegations from Israel and Hamas would also be held later this week in Cairo.

Since Hamas killed 1,200 people and captured 253 hostages in its October 7 attack, Israel launched an all-out ground assault on Gaza, with nearly 30,000 people confirmed killed, according to Gaza health authorities.