US president Joe Biden said on Monday, February 26, that he hoped a ceasefire in Gaza could start by the beginning of next week. A deal could also include the exchange of dozens of hostages for several hundred Palestinian detainees held by Israel. The American president was asked during a visit to New York when such an agreement might start, and answered, "My national security advisor tells me that we're close, we're close, we're not done yet," adding "My hope is by next Monday we'll have a ceasefire."
Representatives from several parties, not including Gaza rulers Hamas, met in Paris over the weekend and "came to an understanding... about what the basic contours of a hostage deal for a temporary ceasefire would look like," White House national security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN Sunday. Following the Paris meeting, Egyptian, Qatari, and US "experts" met in Doha in recent days for talks also attended by Israeli and Hamas representatives, state-linked Egyptian media said, hoping to secure a truce before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. A Hamas source told AFP that "some new amendments" were proposed on contentious issues, but "Israel did not present any substantive position on the terms of the ceasefire and the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip."
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the troop withdrawal demand as "delusional," and said that any ceasefire deal would only delay a military incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where around 1.4 million Palestinians have sought shelter from fighting elsewhere in Gaza. On Monday, an unnamed Israeli official told news site Ynet the "direction (of the talks) is positive," and Israeli media reported that military and intelligence officials were headed to Qatar for further talks on a deal.
Qatar's Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who is playing a central role in the negotiations between Hamas and Israel, is due in Paris this week, following his meeting in Doha with Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas political bureau. The two discussed efforts "aimed at reaching an immediate and permanent ceasefire agreement" in Gaza, the official Qatar News Agency said.