<div style="text-align: justify; "><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><b>Israel and Hamas on Tuesday played down chances of an imminent breakthrough in talks for a cease-fire in Gaza, after U.S. President Joe Biden said Israel has agreed to pause its offensive during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan if a deal is reached to release some hostages.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The president's remarks came on the eve of the Michigan primary, where he faces pressure from the state's large Arab American population over his staunch support for Israel's offensive. Biden said he had been briefed on the status of talks by his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, but said his comments reflected his optimism for a deal, not that all the remaining hurdles had been overcome.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the wake of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, Israel's air, sea and ground campaign in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of people, obliterated large swaths of the urban landscape and displaced 80% of the battered enclave's population.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Israel's seal on the territory, which allows in only a trickle of food and other aid, has sparked alarm that a famine could be imminent, according to the United Nations.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With U.N. truck deliveries of aid hampered by the lack of safe corridors, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and France conducted an airdrop of food, medical supplies and other aid into Gaza on Tuesday. At a beach in southern Gaza, boxes of supplies dropped from military aircraft drifted down on parachutes as thousands of Palestinians ran along the sand to retrieve them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But alarm is growing over worsening hunger among Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Two infants died from dehydration and malnutrition at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza City, said the spokesman for Gaza's Health Ministry, Ashraf al-Qidra. He warned that infant mortality threatens to surge.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Dehydration and malnutrition will kill thousands of children and pregnant women in the Gaza Strip," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The U.N. Population Fund said the Al Helal Al Emirati maternity hospital in Gaza's southernmost town of Rafah reported that newborns were dying because mothers were unable to get prenatal or postnatal care. Premature births are also rising, forcing staff to put four or five newborns in a single incubator. Most of them do not survive, it said, without giving figures on the numbers of deaths.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now the prospect of an invasion of Rafah has prompted global alarm over the fate of around 1.4 million civilians trapped there.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Talks to pause the fighting have gained momentum recently and were underway Tuesday. Negotiators from the United States, Egypt and Qatar have been working to broker a cease-fire that would see Hamas free some of the dozens of hostages it holds in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners, a six-week halt in fighting and an increase in aid deliveries to Gaza.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The start of Ramadan, which is expected to be around March 10, is seen as an unofficial deadline for a deal. The month is a time of heightened religious observance and dawn-to-dusk fasting for hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world. Israeli-Palestinian tensions have flared in the past during the holy month.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Ramadan's coming up, and there has been an agreement by the Israelis that they would not engage in activities during Ramadan as well, in order to give us time to get all the hostages out," Biden said in an appearance on NBC's "Late Night With Seth Meyers" that was recorded Monday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In separate comments the same day, Biden said that he hoped a cease-fire deal could take effect by next week.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the same time, Biden did not call for an end to the war, which was triggered when Hamas militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted roughly 250 people, according to Israeli authorities.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Israeli officials said Biden's comments came as a surprise and were not made in coordination with the country's leadership. A Hamas official played down any sense of progress, saying the group wouldn't soften its demands.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the sensitive talks with the media, said Israel wants a deal immediately, but that Hamas continues to push excessive demands. They also said that Israel is insisting that female soldiers be part of the first group of hostages released under any truce deal.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hamas official Ahmad Abdel-Hadi indicated that optimism on a deal was premature.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The resistance is not interested in giving up any of its demands, and what is proposed does not meet what it had requested," he told the Pan-Arab TV channel Al Mayadeen.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hamas has previously demanded that Israel end the war as part of any deal, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called "delusional."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Washington, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone separately with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to discuss planning for post-conflict reconstruction and governance of Gaza.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Neither country is directly involved with the ceasefire negotiations but both will be critical in supporting what will an expensive, lengthy and difficult scenario when the fighting stops, particularly in winning popular Arab backing for security guarantees for Israel should it agree to talks on the creation of a Palestinian state.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In nearly identical statements, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Blinken had discussed with the ministers the U.S. "commitment to achieving sustained peace through the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At a news conference in Doha on Tuesday, Qatar Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said his country felt "optimistic" about the talks, without elaborating.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A senior official from Egypt has said the draft deal includes the release of up to 40 women and older hostages in return for up to 300 Palestinian prisoners — mostly women, minors and older people.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations, said the proposed six-week pause in fighting would allow hundreds of trucks to bring desperately needed aid into Gaza every day, including to the hard-hit north.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Biden, who has shown staunch support for Israel throughout the war, left open the door in his remarks for an eventual Israeli ground offensive in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, on the border with Egypt, where more than half of the enclave's 2.3 million people have fled under Israeli evacuation orders.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Netanyahu has said a ground operation in Rafah is an inevitable component of Israel's strategy for crushing Hamas. This week, the military submitted for Cabinet approval operational plans for the offensive, as well as evacuation plans for civilians there. AP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bndb24/kh</div>