JERUSALEM, Feb 26 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday he hopes to have a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza start by next Monday as the warring parties appeared to close in on a deal during negotiations in Qatar that also aim to broker the release of hostages.
The presence of both sides for so-called proximity talks - meeting mediators separately but in the same city - suggested negotiations were further along than at any time since a big push at the start of February, when Israel rejected a Hamas counter-offer for a four-and-a-half-month truce.
Biden said he hoped a ceasefire would start within days. "Well I hope by the beginning of the weekend, by the end of the weekend," he said, when asked when he expected a ceasefire to start.
"My national security adviser tells me that we're close. We're close. We're not done yet. My hope is by next Monday we'll have a ceasefire," Biden told reporters during a visit to New York.
A U.S. official said U.S. negotiators had been pushing hard to get a pause-for-hostages deal by Ramadan's beginning on March 10 and top U.S. officials were working on the issue last week. The optimism appeared to grow out of meetings between the Israelis and Qataris, the official said.
In public, Israel and Hamas continued to take positions far apart on a possible truce, while blaming each other for delays.
After meeting Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Ismail Haniyeh, the reclusive head of Hamas, said his group had embraced efforts to find an end to the war, and accused Israel of stalling while Gazans die under siege.
"We will not allow the enemy to use negotiations as a cover for this crime," he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was ready for a deal, and it was up to Hamas to drop demands he described as "from another planet."
"Obviously, we want this deal if we can have it. It depends on Hamas. It's really now their decision," he told U.S. network Fox News. "They have to come down to reality."
Al Thani's office said Al Thani and the Hamas chief had discussed Qatar's efforts to broker an "immediate and permanent ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip."
A source told Reuters earlier that an Israeli working delegation had flown to Qatar to create an operational centre to support negotiations. Its mission would include vetting proposed Palestinian militants that Hamas wants freed in a hostage release deal, the source said.
Israel continues to maintain in public that it will not end the war until Hamas is eradicated, while Hamas says it will not free hostages without an agreement to end the war.
"We're totally committed to wipe Hamas off the face of the Earth," Israel's economy and industry minister, Nir Barkat, told Reuters at a conference in the United Arab Emirates, where his presence signalled Israel's continued acceptance by Arab states that has angered Palestinian militants.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters on Monday any ceasefire agreement would require "securing an end to the aggression, the withdrawal of the occupation, the returning of the displaced, the entry of aid, shelter equipment, and rebuilding."
Israel is under pressure from its main ally the United States to agree on a truce soon, to head off a threatened assault on Rafah, the city in southern Gaza where over half the enclave's 2.3 million people are sheltering, which Washington fears could become a bloodbath.
Photo from Reuters
