“We are close to an agreement and we can get there this week,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday, referring to discussions on a ceasefire in Gaza.• Also read: Gaza: Israel says it has brought back the body of a hostage
• Also read: Gaza: Israel wants to know if Hamas hostages are dead or alive
• Also read: Negotiations with Israel: Hamas says it is ready to release 34 hostages
“I’m not making any promises or predictions, but it’s within reach,” he said of a deal that would include the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip.
“The positions have come together very significantly on the most important points,” added Jake Sullivan, Democratic President Joe Biden’s main diplomatic advisor.
He mentioned in particular the issue of “prisoner exchanges”, the “positioning of Israeli armed forces during the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip”, and “details on how to increase humanitarian aid once the weapons will have fallen silent.
“The differences are slowly being resolved, one after the other,” he insisted.
“There are several reasons for this and the most important is that Israel achieved its essential military objectives in Gaza and Hamas suffered catastrophic losses,” Jake Sullivan said.
He emphasized the Biden administration’s “close coordination” with President-elect Donald Trump’s team, who will be sworn in on January 20.
-Israel ‘works hard’
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Monday that Israel was working “hard” to secure an agreement that would end the war in the Gaza Strip and allow the release of hostages held in the Palestinian territory.
“Israel is serious about releasing the hostages and is working hard to reach an agreement. Negotiations are progressing,” he said during a joint press conference with his Danish counterpart, Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
Indirect negotiations for the release of the 94 hostages, 34 of whom died according to the army, and a truce agreement with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, have intensified in recent days.
Despite intense diplomatic efforts led under the aegis of Qatar, Egypt and the United States, no truce has been concluded since that of a week at the end of November 2023, which saw the release of ‘a hundred hostages.
Negotiations had already taken place in Doha in December, but Hamas and Israel then accused each other of stopping them.
According to Israeli commentators, an agreement is now within reach, in particular because of the decision of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ignore pressure from his far-right ministers, members of his coalition, strengthened at the beginning of November by the rallying of Gideon Saar’s center-right party.
Faced with rumors of an imminent agreement, far-right Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he would not support a “surrender agreement that would include the release of hyper-terrorists, an end to the war , and the loss of what was acquired at the cost of much bloodshed and the abandonment of a large number of hostages.
