Washington, Sep 2 (Agency) The US authorities plan to present a final ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip in the coming weeks, which, if not accepted, could mean the end of the US work in negotiations between Israel and Palestinian movement Hamas, the Washington Post reported, citing a source. The US is in talks with Egypt and Qatar on the contours of a final ‘take it or leave it’ deal, if both sides do not accept it, could mark the end of US-led negotiations, a senior official in the US President Joe Biden administration told the publication on condition of anonymity. “You can’t keep negotiating this. This process has to be called at some point,” the official said. The US was working on an agreement with Egypt and Qatar before the Israeli military discovered the bodies of six hostages kidnapped in October by the Palestinian movement Hamas. A senior official told the newspaper that the discovery of the bodies should “add additional urgency” to the final stage of negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
The publication said, citing another senior official, that some of the killed hostages were supposed to be released in the first phase of the negotiations. Among them, the publication names US citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin and two Israeli women. As two more senior Biden administration officials told the newspaper, the deaths of the hostages pose an additional complication in the ceasefire negotiations. “US officials are going to be burning up the phones over the next 48 hours to see if a deal can still be reached,” the second senior US official told the newspaper. On Sunday morning, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published the names of six hostages whose bodies were found in an underground tunnel in the city of Rafah in the southern Palestinian enclave. Among them is one Russian citizen, 32-year-old Alexander Lobanov, and one US citizen, 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin. The IDF believes that the six hostages whose bodies were found in the Gaza Strip on Saturday evening were killed by Hamas shortly before. Hamas said previously it held Israel responsible for the deaths of Israeli captives in the Gaza Strip. On Saturday, US President Joe Biden said that the participants in the ceasefire talks in the Gaza Strip had reached fundamental agreements on a possible deal.