President Joe Biden walked back his assessment that a hostage deal to pause fighting in the Gaza Strip could be reached by Monday.
“I was on the telephone with the people in the region,” Biden told reporters on the South Lawn Thursday morning, adding: “Probably not by Monday, but I’m hopeful.”
The president said earlier this week he hoped a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas could be in place in roughly a week at an ice cream shop in New York as part of an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers. "We’re close, we’re not done yet,” Biden said.
U.S. representatives, including several from the CIA, have worked with Israeli and Qatar officials in Doha in recent days to try and reach a cease-fire and hostage deal by Monday, but that effort is unlikely to come to a close this weekend, said a person with knowledge of negotiations granted anonymity to describe sensitive conversations.
The U.S. and Israel are still waiting to hear back from Hamas on whether it will agree to a six-week pause in fighting and a new proposal for a prisoners-for-hostages exchange, that person said.
Biden’s reassessment comes as he faces mounting pressure on the campaign trail to demonstrate to voters that he’s pushing the Israeli government to minimize civilian deaths in Gaza while also maintaining support for Israel, Washington’s staunchest ally in the Middle East. He has pushed harder for a pause in the fighting in recent weeks to enable more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza and to allow for the release of Israeli hostages.
The war has been a tricky balancing act for the Biden-Harris campaign, underscored by more than 100,000 people casting “uncommitted” protest ballots in the Michigan primary on Tuesday. Now, Democratic leaders nationally are urging him to show up in communities upset about his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
His timeline revision also follows a grim milestone for the Israel-Hamas war, which is entering its sixth month: Israeli troops fired on a crowd of Palestinians awaiting aid in Gaza City on Thursday, killing more than 100 people — and bringing the civilian death toll in the territory to more than 30,000 since October, per local health officials. Gaza's Health Ministry, which keeps track of the deaths, doesn't differentiate between civilians and combatants in its figures but has said that women and minors account for most of the deaths.
"The events of this morning just underscored how deep and dire the humanitarian needs among the civilian population in Gaza are right now," White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton told reporters on Air Force One Thursday afternoon.
As the death toll continues to rise, aid groups have warned that it’s becoming increasingly challenging to deliver assistance to Palestinians due to the difficulty of working with Israel’s military, ongoing fighting and massive crowds overwhelming the convoys.
There’s also growing fears that Israel’s military will invade the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Gazans are sheltering. The U.S. has warned that such an invasion would be a “disaster” if it proceeds without a plan to protect civilians.
A quarter of the 2.3 million people in Gaza face starvation, while 80 percent have been displaced from their homes, according to the United Nations.
Erin Banco and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
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