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Negotiations in Final Phase: Gaza Ceasefire Agreement Soon?

The United States, along with Arab mediators, are trying to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas to end the 14-month war in the Gaza Strip. Sources close to the talks in Cairo said yesterday that a ceasefire agreement could be signed within days.

One condition would be an exchange of Palestinian prisoners in Israel for Israeli hostages in Gaza. A Palestinian official close to the negotiations said today that mediators had narrowed the differences on most agreement clauses. The negotiations would move to a final phase. He said that Israel had added conditions that Hamas rejected but declined to go into details.

Now that Joe Biden will no longer be US president next month, the current US administration is still trying to move the negotiations forward.

In Jerusalem, Israeli President Isaac Herzog met with Adam Boehler, US President-elect Donald Trump’s designated hostage envoy. Trump has threatened that “all hell will break loose” if Hamas does not release its hostages by January 20, the day Trump returns to the White House.

CIA Director William Burns is scheduled to arrive in Doha today for talks with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on bridging remaining differences between Israel and Hamas, other sources with knowledge said. Israeli negotiators were in Doha on Monday, seeking to bridge the rift between Israel and Hamas in a deal Biden outlined in May.

There have been repeated talks over the past year, but they have all failed. Israel insists on maintaining a military presence in Gaza, while Hamas refuses to release hostages until its troops withdraw.

The war in Gaza, which began after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 people and abducted more than 250 as hostages, has sent shockwaves through the Middle East and left Israel internationally isolated. The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza war now stands at more than 45,000, with the majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents displaced and most of Gaza in ruins.

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