By Athena Papakosta

As long as Hamas agreesWashington expects Israel to accept the plan to end the war, which would begin with a six-week pause in hostilities in the Gaza Strip.

The three-phase plan presented last week by the president of the United States, Joe Biden, concerns the strengthening of humanitarian aid, the exchange of a certain number of hostages for Palestinian prisoners and the end of the war.

Yesterday, Sunday, the representative of the National Security Council, John Kirby, explained that in the first phase of the plan proposed by the US government, “the two sides” will need to “negotiate what the second phase will look like and when it will start.”

As expected, reactions from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were not positive with members coming from the extreme right making threats that if she goes ahead with the biden truce plan, then she will be shot down. In more detail, the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, and the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, threatened to submit their resignations, with the latter stressing, among other things, that “this is a reckless agreement, which is a victory for terrorism and a threat to the security of the State of Israel”.

At the same time, Benjamin Netanyahu himself reiterated that there will be no ceasefire until the goal of eliminating Hamas has been achieved and all hostages have been released. Washington, however, argues that the Islamist Palestinian organization has been weakened militarily with John Kirby underlining that it no longer has “the military capabilities to do what it did”.

For its part, Hamas appeared to welcome the Biden proposal, although last Thursday it had made the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Palestinian enclave a condition for the start of talks.

Pressure is mounting on the Israeli prime minister to accept a ceasefire and hostage release agreement from centrist members of his government as well as the chief of the Israeli Armed Forces and the chief of services. But pressure is being exerted by the relatives of the hostages as well as thousands of citizens in Israel who demonstrated for one more night calling on Netanyahu to proceed with the draft agreement.

Egypt and Qatar, in parallel and together with the United States, issued a statement calling on Israel and Hamas “to finalize the agreement based on the principles formulated by President Biden.”

The president of the United States on Friday emphasized that “it is time to end this war” when he spoke he seemed to be speaking directly to the Israelis. “I ask you to take a step back and think about what will happen if this moment is lost,” he said, hoping both sides would accept the agreement.