A cease-fire plan described by US President Joe Biden has stirred cautious optimism after nearly eight months of war in the Gaza Strip.

After eight months of devastating bombardment by Israeli forces, some Palestinians are
urging Hamas to accept a cease-fire plan outlined by President Joe Biden, but many remain deeply sceptical that the United States, as Israel’s chief ally, would truly bring an end to the war.

“I am hopeful that Hamas will accept this deal,” said Ayman Skeik, a 31-year-old merchant driven out of his home in Gaza City by the fighting. “But I am still scared it would not be achieved.”

Like other Palestinians, Skeik, who is now sheltering in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, said he had grown frustrated by the long and generally fruitless cease-fire talks. He noted pointedly that months ago, in February, Biden suggested that a deal was imminent.

“The United States used to have a strong word when it wanted to stop any crisis in the world,” Skeik said. “But nowadays, I see a different thing.”

Speaking at the White House on Friday, Biden said that Hamas was no longer capable of carrying out a major terrorist attack on Israel like the one on October 7 and that it was “time to end this war.”

He described what he said was a three-phase Israeli plan submitted to Hamas last week that would secure the release of the remaining hostages seized October 7 and ultimately lead to the “cessation of hostilities permanently” and the rebuilding of Gaza.

Hamas has said it viewed Biden’s comments “positively,” but it has kept Palestinians in suspense about whether it will formally agree.

On Tuesday, Sami Abu Zuhri, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, accused Israel of not being serious about a deal and said the White House was putting pressure on Hamas despite “knowing that the problem lies” with the Israelis.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested Monday that he was open to a 42-day pause in the fighting, embracing at least part of the first phase of the three-part plan described by Biden, according to a person who attended a closed-door discussion he held with Israeli lawmakers.

But publicly, Netanyahu has neither formally accepted nor rejected the proposal, and he has continued to insist that Israel will not stop fighting in Gaza until Hamas’ governing and military capabilities are destroyed. He is under pressure from two far-right members of his coalition who have threatened to bring down his government if he agrees to end the war without eliminating Hamas.

Those political complications have given rise to questions about where the Israelis truly stand on the cease-fire plan outlined by Biden — even though the president has described them as the plan’s author.

A spokesperson for the foreign ministry of Qatar, which has been acting as a key mediator in the cease-fire negotiations, said Tuesday that it had delivered the proposal outlined by Biden to Hamas and that it was making its “best efforts to finalize an agreement.”

But the spokesperson, Majed al-Ansari, said, “We are waiting for a clear Israeli position that represents the entire government in response to the US’ Gaza proposal.”

Biden’s decision to publicly disclose the proposal appeared to be an effort to pressure Hamas and Netanyahu to come to an agreement. It came as tensions have been building between the American president and the Israeli prime minister over Israel’s prosecution of the war, which has killed more than 36,000 people in Gaza and has led to an acute humanitarian crisis there, according to the territory’s health officials.

On Tuesday, those tensions burst into the open again when Time magazine published an interview with Biden in which he suggested that Netanyahu might be prolonging the war to hold on to office.

“There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion,” Biden said in the interview, which was conducted May 28, three days before he gave his speech detailing what he described as the Israeli cease-fire plan.

On Tuesday, John F. Kirby, a White House national security spokesperson, said that Biden was simply “referencing what many critics have said.”

“But for our part,” Kirby said, “we’re going to make sure that Israel has what it needs to continue to eliminate the threat by Hamas. And we’re going to continue to work with the prime minister and the war Cabinet to try to get this proposal over the finish line.”

Asked by a reporter in Washington on Tuesday if Netanyahu was “playing politics” with the war, Biden said, “I don’t think so. He’s trying to work out a serious problem he has.”

But Netanyahu is widely seen at home and abroad as concerned that an end to the conflict could lead to the collapse of his government — especially in light of investigations into how Israel ignored evidence that Hamas was preparing for the attack October 7 that killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and how slowly Israel’s defence forces responded.

Adding to international calls for a cease-fire, President Emmanuel Macron of France expressed his support for the plan outlined by Biden in a phone call with Netanyahu on Tuesday, Macron’s office said.

During the call, Macron told the Israeli leader that he “had reiterated his appeal to Hamas, whose responsibility is overwhelming, to accept this agreement,” Macron’s office said.

For the families of some hostages still held in Gaza, the wait for a deal is anguishing. Some described a vicious cycle of hopes raised — then dashed.

“It’s incredibly frustrating to have this yo-yo experience once again,” said Lee Siegel, the brother of Keith Siegel, a 65-year-old Israeli American hostage. “Every day that goes by, it becomes exponentially more difficult to continue with hope.”

Lee Siegel said he was particularly fearful for his brother because he was found last year to have high blood pressure.

“His absence weighs on us every minute, every hour, every day,” he said. “Each day he isn’t here could be his last day.”

On Monday, the Israeli army announced that it had concluded that four hostages had died in the Khan Younis area months ago. The announcement gave fresh urgency to pleas from some families for a deal to bring their relatives home.

Some say that they have lost hope that demonstrations in Israel will move Netanyahu closer to a deal and that they believe only unrelenting US pressure will make a difference.

“The United States should not leave Netanyahu for a second until he signs on to an agreement — not a second,” said Gilad Korngold, the father of Tal Shoham, a 39-year-old hostage from northern Israel.

Korngold said that three members of his family were killed October 7 and that six others who had been abducted were released during a short-lived cease-fire in late November.

Korngold said the United States also needed to urge Qatar to use its influence with Hamas to bring about an agreement. “Hamas is not saying no, but it’s also not saying yes,” he said. “It also has to get the message.”

In Gaza, Anas al-Borno, a 36-year-old businessperson whose family was forced to flee Gaza City and take shelter in Deir al-Balah, said he, too, wanted Hamas to sign the deal, which he described as critical “for us and our children to live in peace and safety.”

But he said he was “still hopeless and pessimistic” that Israel and Hamas would actually agree to end the war.

Others were more hopeful.

Ahmed al-Masri, a 21-year-old dentistry student from Gaza City, said that Biden’s speech felt like an abrupt change.

“The United States has chosen the route of surprises recently,” he said, “so I hope this comes true and is real.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Bilal Shbair, Hiba Yazbek, Adam Rasgon and Michael Levenson

Photographs by: Cheriss May

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