NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden said Monday he hopes a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that would pause hostilities and allow the release of the remaining hostages could take effect early next week.
Asked when he thought a ceasefire could begin, Biden said: “Well, I hope by the start of the weekend. The end of the weekend. My national security advisor tells me we're close. We're close. We are not finished yet. I hope we have a ceasefire by next Monday.”
Biden made the comments in New York after taping an appearance on NBC's “Late Night With Seth Meyers.”
Negotiations are currently underway for a week-long ceasefire between Israel and Hamas to allow the release of hostages held by the militant group in Gaza in return for Israel releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. The proposed six-week pause in fighting would also include allowing hundreds of trucks to bring urgently needed aid to Gaza every day.
Negotiators face an unofficial deadline of starting the Muslim holy month of Ramadan around March 10, a time when there are often heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions.
Meanwhile, Israel has failed to comply with a United Nations Supreme Court order to provide urgently needed aid to desperate people in the Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch said on Monday, a month after a landmark ruling in The Hague ordered Israel to moderate its aid .
In a preliminary response to a South African petition accusing Israel of genocide, the UN's top court ordered Israel to do everything in its power to prevent death, destruction and any genocide in the tiny Palestinian enclave. It failed to order an end to the military offensive that had triggered a humanitarian catastrophe.
Israel denies the allegations against it, saying it is fighting in self-defense.
Almost five months after the start of the war, preparations are underway to expand Israel's ground operation to Rafah, Gaza's southernmost city on the border with Egypt, where 1.4 million Palestinians have sought shelter.
AP correspondent Karen Chammas reports on Human Rights Watch claims that Israel is restricting aid to desperate Palestinians.
Early Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said the army had submitted to the War Cabinet its operational plan for Rafah, as well as plans to evacuate civilians from combat zones. She did not provide any further information.
The situation in Rafah has caused global concern. Israel's allies have warned that it must protect civilians in the fight against the militant group Hamas.
Also on Monday, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh submitted his government's resignation and President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to appoint technocrats who will meet U.S. demands for internal reforms. The US has called for a revived Palestinian Authority to govern the post-war Gaza Strip before it becomes a state – a scenario rejected by Israel.
In its January 26 ruling, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take six interim measures, including “immediate and effective measures to enable the delivery of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” to Gaza.
Israel must also submit a report within a month on what it is doing to comply with the measures. Israel's Foreign Ministry said late Monday that it had submitted such a report. It declined to share it or discuss its contents.
Israel said 245 trucks carrying aid supplies entered the Gaza Strip on Sunday. That is less than half the amount that came in daily before the war.
Human Rights Watch, citing U.N. figures, found a 30% decline in the daily average number of aid trucks entering Gaza in the weeks following the court ruling. It said an average of 93 trucks entered daily between January 27 and February 21, compared to 147 trucks per day in the three weeks before the ruling. The daily average fell to 57 between February 9 and 21, the figures showed.
The rights group said Israel was not adequately facilitating fuel deliveries to the hard-hit northern Gaza Strip and blamed Israel for blocking the delivery of aid to the north, where the World Food Program said last week it was forced to suspend aid deliveries.
“The Israeli government simply ignored the court’s ruling and in some ways even increased its repression,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch.
The Association of International Development Agencies, a coalition of more than 70 humanitarian organizations working in Gaza and the West Bank, said almost no aid had reached Gaza Strip areas north of Rafah since the court's ruling.
Israel denies that it is restricting the entry of aid and instead blames humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza. Large aid deliveries are at a standstill on the Palestinian side of the main crossing. The UN says they cannot always reach the border crossing because it is sometimes too dangerous.
In some cases, crowds of desperate Palestinians have surrounded delivery trucks and taken supplies. The UN has called on Israel to open more border crossings, including in the north, and to improve the process.
Netanyahu's office said the War Cabinet had approved a plan to safely deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza to “prevent looting.” No further details were disclosed.
The war, which began after Hamas-led militants rampaged across southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 people hostage, has wreaked havoc in Gaza.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants in its count, nearly 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza, two-thirds of them women and children. Israel says it killed 10,000 militants without providing evidence.
The fighting has leveled swathes of Gaza's urban landscape, displacing about 80% of the territory's 2.3 million residents, who have crowded into ever-smaller spaces in search of elusive security.
The crisis has driven a quarter of the population to starvation and raised fears of impending famine, particularly in the northern part of Gaza, the first focus of Israel's ground invasion. Starving residents were forced to eat animal feed and forage for food in destroyed buildings.
“I wish death on the children because I can’t get them bread. I can't feed her. I can’t feed my own children!” shouted Naim Abouseido as he waited for help in Gaza City. “What did we do to deserve this?”
Bushra Khalidi of the British aid group Oxfam told The Associated Press that she had reviewed reports that children had starved to death in the north in recent weeks, which she said suggested aid would not be expanded despite the court ruling.
Aid groups say deliveries continue to be hampered by security issues. French aid groups Médecins du Monde and Doctors Without Borders each said their facilities were attacked by Israeli forces in the weeks following the court order.
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Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel, Chehayeb from Beirut and Miller from New York. Associated Press writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.
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