As the humanitarian crisis threatens to turn into famine in the Gaza Strip, US President Joe Biden he stated yesterday Monday that he harbors the “hope” that I will truce to be declared next week between Israel and Hamas.

Qatar, Egypt, the US, France and other countries have been negotiating a new truce in recent weeks.

According to an AFP source in the Palestinian Islamist movement, a six-week ceasefire, an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israel and the arrival of more humanitarian aid to the enclave are being discussed.

“I hope that by next Monday, we will have a ceasefire,” the US president told reporters last night in New York. “My national security adviser (Sr. Jake Sullivan) tells me we’re close, but we’re not done yet,” he explained.

“The trend is positive,” an Israeli official told the Ynet news website, the digital version of the Gedot Aharonot newspaper, on condition of anonymity.

Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, a country at the center of the negotiation — and which hosts the leadership of Hamas on its soil — begins today a two-day official visit to Paris, the French presidency announced.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated yesterday Sunday that his army will very soon launch a ground offensive against Hamas in Rafah, which according to him will allow “total victory” within “a few weeks”. Even if a truce is declared, the attack will not “stop”, he explained.

Israel’s military has presented Mr. Netanyahu’s wartime government with a plan for the “urgent removal” of civilians from “hostilities zones” in the Gaza Strip, the prime minister’s office said yesterday, but he has not yet made clear where he means to move. the displaced.

“Final nail in the coffin” of aid?

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday that the attack on Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Gazans have taken refuge, displaced — many more than once — because of the war.

The city, on the closed border with Egypt, is effectively the only gateway for international humanitarian aid to the besieged and largely leveled Gaza Strip after nearly five months of shelling and fighting.

The Israeli attack has killed at least 29,782 people in the enclave, the vast majority of them women and children, according to Hamas’ health ministry.

The war broke out on October 7 when Hamas’ military arm launched an unprecedented offensive against southern Israel, killing more than 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. Another 250 or so were kidnapped, of whom more than 130 remain in the hands of Hamas in the Gaza Strip — but a military spokesman said recently that at least 31 are believed to be dead.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu continues to be pressured by public opinion and especially by the families of the hostages to make a deal for their return, and protests against his government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, have now resumed.

Israeli voters are called to the polls today for municipal elections, which were supposed to be held at the end of October, but were postponed twice because of the armed conflict.

“We are dying of hunger”

Foreign governments and humanitarian officials have not stopped warning against the attack on Rafah, stressing that it would have a huge number of civilian casualties and further exacerbate the humanitarian disaster.

Gazans confided in AFP that in recent days they have been eating plant leaves, animal feed, they are forced to kill animals to feed themselves. The few convoys that reach the northern part of the enclave are looted.

“We are dying of hunger,” said Abdullah al-Aqra, 40, who has taken refuge in Gaza City. He added that the Israeli army opened fire the day before Sunday against “starving people who were trying to get flour” from an aid truck.

The non-governmental organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel on Monday of continuing to restrict the arrival of humanitarian aid, despite the order of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of the United Nations in The Hague to prevent genocide in the Gaza Strip.

The Jordanian armed forces also announced that they had carried out a series of drops of humanitarian aid, food and other supplies “directly to the population” in the besieged Gaza Strip, with the participation of a French air force transport.

The Palestinian Authority government tendered its resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday, as Americans and others call for reforms and changes in the Palestinian political leadership ahead of the “next day” of the war on the Gaza Strip.

Since 2007, the Palestinian leadership has been divided, with the Palestinian Authority exercising limited powers in the West Bank, an area occupied by Israel since 1967, and Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip.