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US President Joe Biden and Jordan’s King Abdullah continued to press for a ceasefire in Gaza at a meeting ahead of new talks as part of a deal between Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement to free hostages and pause fighting.
A day before talks in Cairo, where representatives of Egypt, Qatar, Israel and the United States are expected, Biden told Abdullah that Washington was working on a deal that “will lead to an immediate and sustained period of calm in Gaza for at least six weeks.” This is being worked on “day and night”, he assured.
The deal is supposed to lead to the release of hostages (more than 130 remain, but nearly 30 have died, according to the Israeli military) in Gaza taken in Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, which killed 1,200 people. The initial offer made by Egypt (and attributed to Israel) was for a pause of two months, but Hamas counter-offered 135 days, or 4 and a half months, which Israel rejected.
Hamas has proposed a 135-day truce, US and Arab pressure is growing
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he had ordered the army to begin preparing a plan for the Rafah offensive, which has alarmed both the West and the Arab world with the huge risk to civilians and jeopardizes Israel’s key security treaty with Egypt.
A gesture to Israel
King Abdullah, meanwhile, used the occasion to make a gesture to Israel along with the call for a ceasefire more than four months after the war began. “All attacks on innocent civilians, women and children, including those on October 7, cannot be accepted by any Muslim,” he said. Israel believes that Arab countries are turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed by Hamas that led to the Gaza war that killed more than 28,000 Palestinians (and says many of them are extremists).
“As I have emphasized before, we must make sure that the horror of the last weeks after October 7 is never repeated, nor accepted by any human being,” he continued, calling for work on a “political horizon” that would led to lasting peace. “We cannot stand by and let this continue,” he said. “We need a permanent ceasefire now. This war must end.”
Some of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian descent, and it worries about an escalation of the war in the neighboring occupied West Bank. Thousands protested repeatedly against Israel in the country. Biden was due to visit Jordan on his visit to Israel shortly after the war began, but the meeting was canceled after an attack on a hospital in Gaza, attributed to Israel but possibly caused by a Palestinian rocket.
Arab Street Challenged Arab Leaders, But Not as Hamas Planned
Abdullah, meanwhile, continues his Gaza-focused trip to Canada, France and Germany to seek support for the diplomatic pressure he says is needed to bring about a ceasefire and outline the future of Gaza and the Palestinian territories.
Tension before Rafah
At the same time, the irritation between the White House and Israel is already visible on the surface. In the remarks with King Abdullah, Biden toughened his tone on Israel again after Washington made it clear it would support the offensive in the southern city of Rafah only if there was a detailed plan to protect more than 1.3 million civilians.
Egypt sent tanks to the Gaza border and warned Israel
The Jordanian king also warned Israel not to attack Rafah, calling such an operation a guarantee that there would be “another humanitarian disaster”. “The situation is already unbearable for over a million people pushed into Rafah since the start of the war,” he said. Israel insists that the operation is needed there against the last four Hamas battalions, but that civilians will be evacuated first.
“Civilians in Rafah, vulnerable, must be protected… We oppose any forced displacement,” Biden told Abdullah at a time when the head of state is under pressure from voters to toughen his tone against Israel.
An Israeli military spokesman said earlier that he did not yet know how civilians would be evacuated from Rafah. Meanwhile, the UN has warned that moving civilians to other, already destroyed, areas of Gaza (from which they fled in the course of the war) is not a solution.
Why the operation in Rafah will be the riskiest since the beginning of the war
“We will not participate in the forced displacement of people. As it is now, there is no place that is currently safe in Gaza,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.
You can’t move people back into areas littered with unexploded ordnance, let alone a lack of shelter.
Stefan Dužarik,
UN spokesman
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, suggested on Monday that the way to reduce civilian casualties could be to cut off arms supplies to Israel.
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