a truce in military operations is expected during Ramadan, assures Joe Biden

Joe Biden wants to believe it. The American president affirmed on Monday February 26 that Israel would cease its military operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip during Ramadan. “Ramadan is coming and there was an agreement by the Israelis that they would not engage in operations during Ramadan, to give us time to get all the hostages out.” detained by the Palestinian Islamist movement, he declared in an interview with the American channel NBC. The month of Ramadan should begin around March 10. The mediating countries, Qatar, Egypt and the United States, are trying to negotiate a compromise with Israel and Hamas with a view to a truce.

“I am hopeful that by next Monday we will have a ceasefire”Joe Biden had declared earlier. “My national security advisor tells me we are close, it’s not there yet”, he qualified. Hamas has been demanding for weeks a complete ceasefire before any agreement on the release of the hostages. Israel, for its part, affirms that a truce would not mean the end of the war and that it would continue until the total elimination of Hamas.

The international community is concerned about the potentially disastrous consequences of an upcoming ground offensive announced by Israel on the overcrowded town of Rafah, in the south of Gaza, where, according to the UN, nearly one and a half million Palestinians are refugees. , trapped against the closed border with Egypt. The toll of the war triggered on October 7 by the unprecedented attack of the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli soil is approaching 30,000 dead in Gaza, according to the count of the Hamas Ministry of Health.