US president’s claim greeted with surprise as deaths spiral in Gaza and Israeli forces accused of more ‘war crimes’ for shooting starving people seeking food aid.
United States President Donald Trump said he believes a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas could be reached within a week.
Trump came out with the surprise comment while speaking to reporters on Friday, saying he was hopeful after speaking to some of the people involved in trying to get a truce.
“I think it’s close. I just spoke to some of the people involved,” Trump said.
“We think within the next week we’re going to get a ceasefire,” the president said, without revealing who he had been in contact with.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman in Jordan, said Trump’s comment will be “welcome news” to the starved and bombed population of Gaza, but she also cautioned that there are “no negotiations at this moment happening anywhere in the region”.
“What we do know is that talk of a ceasefire increased exponentially after the ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Israel does not want to talk about ending the war. In fact, the Israeli prime minister would be risking a lot if he did,” Odeh said.
But, she added, there is an understanding, according to many reports, that Netanyahu would have to agree to some sort of ceasefire in exchange for normalisation deals with Arab states, which the Trump administration has promoted.
Hamas, on the other hand, requires that Israel stop its war on Gaza and for the Israeli military to withdraw from areas it seized in Gaza after breaking the last ceasefire in March.
“Hamas also wants US guarantees that negotiations would continue and that Israel wouldn’t break the ceasefire again if more time was needed for negotiations,” Odeh added.
Trump’s ceasefire prediction comes at a time of mounting killings by Israeli forces in Gaza and growing international condemnation of Israel’s war amid the latest revelation that soldiers said they were ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinian civilians seeking humanitarian aid in the territory.
Authorities in Gaza said the report by the Haaretz media outlet that Israeli commanders ordered the deliberate shooting of starving Palestinians was further proof of Israel’s “war crimes” in the war-torn territory.
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz have rejected the report of commanders targeting civilians, Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported that almost 550 Palestinians have been killed near US- and Israel-backed aid distribution points in Gaza since late May.
“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday. “The search for food must never be a death sentence,” he said.
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (also known by its French acronym MSF) branded the situation in Gaza as “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid”.
A spokesperson for the office of Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said they had no information to share about a possible ceasefire breakthrough in Gaza.
Witkoff helped former US President Joe Biden’s aides broker a ceasefire and captive release agreement in Gaza shortly before Trump took office in January. But the truce was broken by Israel in March when it launched a wave of surprise bombing attacks across the territory.
Israeli officials said that only military action would result in the return of captives held in Gaza, and imposed a blockade on food, water, medicine and fuel entering the territory that led to widespread starvation among the 2.1 million population.
Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer is scheduled to visit Washington next week for talks with Trump administration officials on Gaza, Iran and a possible White House visit by Netanyahu, according to a source familiar with the matter.
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