The American president, Joe Biden, announced this Sunday that the first three Israeli hostages released as part of the ceasefire agreement “appear to be healthy” and assured that for the first time this Sunday “The guns have gone silent” in the Gaza Strip.
Speaking from Charleston, South Carolina, he announced the first day of the ceasefire: “Today we expect several hundred (aid) trucks to enter the Gaza Strip as I speak. After so much pain, destruction and loss of life, the guns in Gaza have gone silent.
“The road to this agreement It hasn’t been easy by any means. and it has been long,” acknowledged Biden, whose negotiating team, recently joined by President-elect Donald Trump’s envoy, closed on Thursday a ceasefire plan basically identical to the one put on the table by the US mediation team. ., Qatar and Egypt in May.
“We have reached this point today because of pressure that Israel has put on Hamas with the support of the United States“said Biden, who assured that abandoning this support for the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have been a mistake, would not have concluded this ceasefire plan and would have “put the region at greater risk of war in the future.” scale”.
Entry into force
The ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas came into effect this Sunday at 11:15 local time (09.15 GMT) with the entry of humanitarian aid to the Strip and the release of Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher and Romi Gonen after 471 days in Hamas custody in Gaza. In exchange, Israel will release 90 Palestinian prisoners (women and children) in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In this first phase of the plan “success will require persistence and continued support of our friends in the region, believing in diplomacy backed by deterrence,” Biden said.
The outgoing president managed to present a peace agreement in Gaza shortly before Trump takes over from him in the White House this Monday and after months of fruitless mediation to end the humanitarian tragedy in the Palestinian enclave, which has endured 15 months of bombings and war due to the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
New round of talks
In 16 days a new round of talks will begin which, Biden has assured, will aim for the Palestinian Islamist movement to “abandon power” in the Palestinian enclave, something that Hamas is not willing to consent to.
A second phase “which includes the return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers and the permanent end of the war, to remove Hamas from power, unable to threaten Israel,” in the words of the North American president, who has framed this scenario within a new regional reality.
“This is one of the most difficult negotiations I have ever participated in but we have reached this point today because of Israeli pressure on US-backed Hamas. Now, the region has been transformed in a fundamental way,” he concluded.