United States President Donald Trump said he believes a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas could be reached within a week, reports Al Jazeera.
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.
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.
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.
Bd-pratidin English/TR
