An aide to United President Donald Trump has suggested a Gaza ceasefire is close, saying Washington hopes to see an agreement finalised by the end of the week.
“We’re in proximity talks now, and we had four issues, and now we’re down to one after two days of proximity talks,” special US envoy Steve Witkoff told reporters at the White House on Tuesday.
“So we are hopeful that by the end of this week, we will have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire.”
Witkoff said the deal would see the release of 10 Israeli captives and the bodies of nine. He added that the Trump administration thinks the deal “will lead to a lasting peace in Gaza”.
Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters in Washington, DC, that while Israel “still has to finish the job in Gaza”, negotiators are “certainly working” on a ceasefire.
Trump and Netanyahu dined together on Monday at the White House during the Israeli leader’s third US visit since the president began his second term on January 20.
The two leaders are to meet again later on Tuesday.
“He’s coming over later. We’re going to be talking about, I would say, almost exclusively Gaza. We’ve got to get that solved,” the US president told reporters at a cabinet meeting in the White House on Tuesday.
“It’s a tragedy, and he wants to get it solved, and I want to get it solved, and I think the other side wants to.”
Qatar confirmed on Tuesday that Hamas and Israeli delegations are in Doha to discuss the ceasefire proposal.
“There is a positive engagement right now. The mediation teams – the Qataris and the Egyptians – are working around the clock to make sure that there is some consensus built on the framework towards the talks,” Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 57,500 Palestinians, internally displaced nearly the entire population of the enclave and placed hundreds of thousands of people on the verge of starvation.
United Nations experts and rights group have described Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide.
Netanyahu suggested on Monday that the US and Israel are working to ensure the mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza – an idea first proposed by Trump in February.
Israeli officials have been framing the push to remove all Palestinians from Gaza Gaza as an effort to encourage “voluntary migration” from the territory.
“If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave. It shouldn’t be a prison. It should be an open place and give people a free choice,” Netanyahu told reporters.
Rights advocates said the removal of Palestinians from Gaza, which would amount to ethnic cleansing, cannot be considered voluntary.
Prominent legal expert Ralph Wilde said that with the widespread destruction, siege and daily attacks in Gaza, the concept of free choice to stay there or leave “is a lie”.
“It’s forced displacement because that isn’t a choice that is made freely,” Wilde told Al Jazeera.
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