Things ARE moving quickly….
A six week cease-fire Hostage/POW agreement is on the table with President Biden’s push and assistance…
It is NOT complete and Hamas will NOT release ALL of the hostages in the first phase….
Some hostages in the count are not alive, also…
Israeli leaders STILL say no matter what agreement….
They ARE still going to hunt down Hamas leaders.responsible for the Oct.7th attacks against Israel…
Next week is a target date for some sort of possible agreement that might lead to a permanent plan for the Palestinian’s and Israel, with outside help….
The framework for a hostage deal that would include a six-week pause to the Gaza war is in place, but it is contingent on a positive response from Hamas, a senior US administration official said on Friday.
“Right now, the ball is in the court of Hamas and we are continuing to push this as hard as we possibly can,” a US official told reporters during a background briefing on a deal that the US hopes will be in place by the start of the holy month of Ramadan on March 10.
“The Israelis have accepted .. a six-week cease-fire” as part of a “phased deal” that would “enable a significant surge of the humanitarian work that has to be done,” a US official said….
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The sticking point now, the US official said, is the hostages, especially those who are vulnerable, such as women, the sick, and the elderly who would be freed in the first phase.
His words echoed other statements that indicated that not all of the remaining 134 hostages would be freed during the six-week pause to the war.
In the background briefing, the US official said, that this deal is more complex than the one carried out in November, as he referred to the week-long pause that saw the release of 105 captives….
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Hamas did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the assurances and whether they were sufficient to move forward with the six-week pause.
“When it comes to ending the war and pulling forces out of Gaza, gaps remain unbridged,” a Palestinian official familiar with mediation efforts said. The official did not immediately confirm the Cairo talks.
Israel also wants Hamas to agree to a ratio of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for each hostage, said the source, who declined to be identified further.
A draft proposal drawn up in Paris in February and sent to Hamas this week indicated progress on a number of issues and proposed an overall ratio of one hostage in exchange for 10 Palestinian security prisoners and terrorists jailed in Israel.
Completion of a truce deal also required an agreement on the pullback of Israeli forces from northern Gaza and a return of Palestinian residents displaced towards the south of the coastal enclave, the Egyptian sources said, although the source briefed on the talks said that for Israel the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza was not the main holdup…
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One diplomat in the region said, “At the end of the day Hamas wants a truce, but wants a permanent ceasefire more, they are not an army in the full military sense and they don’t have access to foreign arms supplies and sooner or later they will start running out of the gun power.”