'Not there yet': Biden admin hopes ceasefire agreement will be finalized next week

President Joe Biden on Friday claimed the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas is far closer than it was earlier this week, but that he hopes it will be finalized next week. 

Negotiators have been working on the ceasefire agreement in Qatar this week, and just concluded two days of discussions. The mediators have described the talks as serious, constructive and “conducted in a positive atmosphere," and the United States is expected to wrap its part of the negotiations by the end of next week.

“I don’t want to jinx anything … we’re not there yet,” Biden said in remarks from the Oval Office, according to The Hill. “But we’re much, much closer than we were three days ago.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to fly to Israel this weekend, per i24 News, in order to conclude the ceasefire agreement, which will include the release of hostages on both sides.

A framework of the agreement was revealed in May, and a “final bridging proposal” was introduced this week that clarifies the framework and includes implementation details for the proposal.

“It has been negotiated for months, and we do believe very strongly, and there’s momentum here in this process, to work to bring this to its conclusion,” a senior Biden administration official said in a call to reporters Friday.

The biggest hold-up appears to be over the list of hostages that will be exchanged, but negotiators said they will continue to work on the issue next week. 

“This is extremely complicated, and a large basis of the talks over the course of the last two days were about that exchange issue, which, in the nomenclature, is known as the keys,” the official said. “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.”

Under the framework, the ceasefire will last approximately six weeks, and will allow for a surge in humanitarian aid for the Palestinians in Gaza that are caught in the crossfire. The Israeli military is also expected to pull back from certain areas, and some displaced Palestinians should be allowed to return to their homes.

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.