Biden Pushes For Gaza Ceasefire As Hamas Remains Open To Truce

Last Updated:November 27, 2024, 19:30 IST

Israel-Hamas Ceasefire On The Cards? Biden, however, said that the truce will ensure that Hamas is not in power anymore in Gaza.

Hamas and US President Joe Biden (not pictured) have both expressed their desire to see an end to the war in Gaza. (IMAGE: Reuters)

US President Joe Biden said the US will make another push with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and others to bring into effect a ceasefire in Gaza while ensuring release of hostages and eyeing an end to the war in the blockaded coastal enclave without Hamas in power.

“Over the coming days, the United States will make another push with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel, and others to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza with the hostages released and an end to the war without Hamas in power," Biden said in a post in X.

The US President may want a Hamas-free Gaza, an aim the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also has, but the Palestinian militant group also said that it is ready for a cease-fire in Gaza.

“We are committed to cooperating with any effort to reach a cease-fire in Gaza and we are interested in ending the aggression against our people," Hamas said in a statement but highlighted that its certain longstanding demands will have to be met.

Hamas has stated that for any ceasefire to take place, it must result in the end of the ongoing conflict, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, the return of displaced Gazans to their homes, and the negotiation of a prisoner exchange involving hostages, while welcoming the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal.

A ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that began Wednesday appeared to be holding, as residents in cars heaped with belongings streamed back toward southern Lebanon despite warnings from the Israeli and Lebanese militaries that they stay away from certain areas.

If it holds, the ceasefire would bring an end to nearly 14 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which escalated in mid-September into all-out war and threatened to pull Hezbollah’s patron Iran and Israel into a broader conflagration. The deal does not address the war in Gaza.

It could give some reprieve to the 1.2 million Lebanese displaced by the fighting and the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along the border with Lebanon.

“They were a nasty and ugly 60 days," said Mohammed Kaafarani, 59, who was displaced from the Lebanese village of Bidias. “We reached a point where there was no place to hide."

The US- and France-brokered deal, approved by Israel late Tuesday, calls for an initial two-month halt to fighting and requires Hezbollah to end its armed presence in southern Lebanon, while Israeli troops are to return to their side of the border.

More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon the past 13 months, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials.

Hezbollah emerges from the war battered and bloodied, with the reputation it built by fighting Israel to a stalemate in the 2006 war tarnished. Yet its fighters still managed to put up heavy resistance on the ground, slowing Israel’s advance while continuing to fire scores of rockets, missiles and drones across the border each day.

Washington D.C., United States of America (USA)

News world Biden Pushes For Gaza Ceasefire As Hamas Remains Open To Truce