As President Joe Biden's time in office comes to an end, there are several things he's hoping to wrap-up before he hands the keys over — one of them being securing a cease-fire agreement in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, which has led to a Palestinian death toll surpassing 40,000 during the 10-month-old war, according to AP News.
On Friday, mediators from the U.S., Israel, Qatar, Egypt and Hamas concluded two days of talks in Doha, Qatar, with a joint statement from Washington, Doha and Cairo describing the efforts towards an end to the bloody conflict as serious, constructive and “conducted in a positive atmosphere,” per reporting from The Hill.
Commenting on the work put in towards nailing down the cease-fire agreement, Biden spoke from the Oval Office saying, “I don’t want to jinx anything … we’re not there yet. But we’re much, much closer than we were three days ago."
If all goes well, the Biden Administration hopes to tie a bow on the agreement before the end of next week, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to Israel on Sunday with hopes to finalize it.
“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 administration official said on Friday.
