Ceasefire Agreement

Two days ago, the White House released the background call transcript to the press by its Senior Administration Official regarding the outcome of the ceasefire agreement meetings between President Biden, President Al-Sisi of Egypt and Sheik Amir Tamim of Qatar, “I think there was a consensus between all three leaders that this process, which obviously has been ongoing for months, is now in the end game. The leaders talked about a final bridging proposal that the United States put on the table today, late in the day here in Qatar, with the full support of Egypt and Qatar as mediators. And we will be reconvening in Cairo, at this level, before the end of next week, with an aim to close out this process once and for all.” The Senior administration official describes the bridging deal set forth by the US, Egypt and Qatar started through a constructive two day meetings and agreements at Doha, “There’s a lot of prep work that led up to these two days. I thought the two days here in Doha probably were the most constructive 48 hours that we’ve had in this process in many months. The Israeli team that was here was empowered — clearly empowered. We made a lot of progress on a number of issues that we’ve been working on. Hamas officials, of course, are here in Doha, and senior officials from Qatar and Egypt were able to engage with them throughout the two days.” As a background to the upcoming conclusion on this major ceasefire negotiation, Israel’s proposal on May 27 became the basis of Biden’s 31st speech, where the President sets the tone that there’s more maneuvering and work that needs to be done before all parties arrives on a final deal, meanwhile Hamas on July 3rd came back with a response, and in July 27, Israel came back with clarifications and basically what the US had done is bridge and close all the gaps from the agreements and discussions between Israel and Hamas. The Senior White House official also remarked, “Over the course of this week, there are working group engagements to talk about everything from the list of hostages and the sequence by which hostages would be released; the list of Palestinian prisoners, because, ultimately, this is an exchange similar to what you saw in the November ceasefire deal. And this is extremely complicated. And a large basis of the talks over the course of the last two days were about that issue, that exchange issue, which, in the nomenclature, is known as the keys. And there were some gaps there and some trade space between the parties, which I think we’ve now gone a long way to bridge. And again, our focus is getting the hostages out of Gaza and getting them out a lot, particularly in this first phase.” The official also stressed the important elements that are also part of the deal which includes the humanitarian provisions: the amount of aid, clearing of rubble, rehabilitation of medical services, and electricity. Secretary Blinken will be traveling to the region starting on Sunday to iron out more details from the upcoming deal.