Washington:

US President Joe Biden said Saturday that a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war was possible as soon as “tomorrow” if the group released its hostages.

“There would be a ceasefire tomorrow if Hamas would release the hostages,” Biden said at a fundraiser outside Seattle, at the home of a former Microsoft executive, after avoiding the topic at three similar events on Friday.

“Israel said it’s up to Hamas, if they wanted to do it, we could end it tomorrow. And the ceasefire would begin tomorrow,” Biden told the crowd of about 100 people.

The president raised the issue after warning Israel on Wednesday that he would stop supplying artillery shells and other weapons if its forces attack the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, as he deplored the fact that civilians had been killed by the dropping of US bombs.

“If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used… to deal with the cities,” Biden said in a televised interview with CNN.

“We’re not gonna supply the weapons and the artillery shells that have been used.”

Hamas and Israel have so far failed to reach a ceasefire deal despite repeated rounds of indirect negotiations.

Some 250 people were abducted to the Gaza Strip on October 7 when Hamas attacked southern Israel.

Israeli officials say 128 of them are still held captive in the Palestinian territory, including at least 36 who are dead.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

In Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, at least 34,971 people have been killed so far, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Gaza:

A Hamas spokesman said Monday that the Palestinian group would continue negotiations towards a truce in Gaza, despite Israel’s order to begin evacuating people from Rafah in the south.

“We will continue the negotiations positively and with an open heart”, Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif al-Qanou told AFP.

He reiterated that an agreement was needed to provide “for a permanent ceasefire and the fulfilment of the demands of our people”.

Israel has publicly rejected a permanent ceasefire.

Qanou’s comments came after Israel’s military early Monday ordered the evacuation of Palestinians from eastern Rafah, ahead of a long-threatened ground invasion of the southern Gaza city, the prospect of which has triggered widespread global alarm. 

After the latest round of truce talks in Cairo failed to produce a breakthrough over the weekend, Hamas’s delegation headed back to Qatar where its political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, is based.

“The movement’s leadership is in a state of internal and factional consultation after the last round of negotiations in Cairo,” Qanou said.

Any truce reached would be the first since a week-long November ceasefire saw a hostage-prisoner swap between Israel and the Islamist movement.

But negotiation efforts to halt their seven-month war have stalled in part because of Hamas’s demand for a lasting ceasefire and full withdrawal of Israeli troops, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vows to continue the ground operations and crush Hamas’s remaining fighters in Rafah.

Hamas’s demand for a full Israeli withdrawal is something “no Israeli government can accept”, a statement from Netanyahu’s office said, maintaining that “would allow Hamas to once again militarily control the Strip” and prepare for another “October 7, as it has promised to do”.

Senior officials of Hamas accused Netanyahu of sabotaging the truce talks out of “personal interests”. Netanyahu’s office called this “an absolute lie” and said, “it is Hamas that sabotages every deal by not budging an inch from its extreme demands.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)