The White House shows growing impatience about the need to reach a ceasefire in Gaza. “There simply has to be an agreement,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby insisted on Tuesday about the negotiations in Cairo for a pact between Israel and Hamas that would allow a truce in the Gaza Strip. in exchange for the release of hostages. “If we have a ceasefire, we can achieve something more lasting and perhaps end the conflict (in Gaza)… but all that starts with an agreement that returns the hostages to their families,” he added at a press conference. Beyond the international scene, this message also has a domestic political motivation. For the White House, at a time when President Joe Biden is not doing well in the polls, reaching an agreement is vital, in the midst of the electoral campaign and while the increasingly widespread pro-Palestinian university protests rage against the support of Washington to Israel.
While waiting for Hamas to give its response to the most recent proposal in the negotiations that have been going on for months, the United States is putting pressure from all angles, with Biden at the helm, for the radical Palestinian militia to accept an agreement that allows the delivery of more than 30 hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and a truce in the fighting.


















The talks have entered their final stretch at a decisive moment for the Biden Administration: anti-war protests are spreading in US universities and achieving an agreement may be the only asset to prevent the schism with voters from growing. younger and progressive wing and the management of the conflict continues to weigh down the president in the polls ahead of the November elections.
If the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, held a whole series of meetings in Tel Aviv with the Israeli authorities at the end of his seventh tour of the Middle East since the conflict began, Biden himself is also involved in the negotiations.

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On Monday, the president was speaking with his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah al Sisi, and the emir of Qatar, the leaders of the two countries that, along with the United States, are mediating the talks. The tenant of the White House asked the two Arab leaders to put pressure on Hamas so that the radical Palestinian group accepts the terms of the pact. In a message on X, the old Twitter, he also repeated after those conversations that “Hamas is now the only obstacle to an immediate ceasefire and relief for civilians in Gaza.”
The American president is in a hurry. The situation in Gaza, for him, is a matter of domestic politics. Ending the war would be a huge boost ahead of the November elections, and would quell elements of conflict that are either underway – such as the Houthi attacks in Yemen against merchant ships in the Red Sea – or on the way to boiling over, such as clashes between Israel and Hezbollah on the Lebanese border.
Prolonging the conflict, on the other hand, complicates Biden’s political prospects. Something that cannot be allowed, when the polls once again show setbacks in his battle against Republican Donald Trump. The average of polls prepared by the specialized website RealClearPolitics It places him one and a half points below his rival, and in the most disputed states the former president increases his advantage to 3.2 points.
A Harvard Youth Poll survey in April found that the Democrat only leads his predecessor by eight percentage points among those under 30 years of age, a segment of the population traditionally inclined towards that party and that the president needs strong support in the elections. which are presumed to be very close. In 2020, Biden achieved a 23-point lead among the young vote.
Concern among Democrats
On Capitol Hill, concern is palpable among Democratic legislators regarding the pro-Palestinian university protests — in which hundreds of students have already been arrested — and the possibility that the Republican opposition will take advantage of them to attract at least part of the public opinion. public.
“If some kind of (ceasefire) was achieved in Gaza right now it would be very helpful,” Democratic representative Jan Schakowsky told Axios, according to whom the crisis in the Strip “is hanging” over the campaign.
Among Democrats, there is fear that, if no good news arrives from the Middle East, the protests will continue with renewed strength once the final exam season is over. And even reach the party convention in August in Chicago, the great event of his political campaign in which Biden will be hailed as his official candidate for the November presidential elections. The prospect scares many, who remember how the last convention held in that city, in 1968, unfolded disastrously amid strong street protests against the Vietnam War.
For now, the White House is trying to explain to the progressive wing of its party what it is doing and what it is trying to achieve in Gaza. This week, national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with lawmakers from that group.

And meanwhile, Biden has reduced to a minimum what, in normal times, would be an event as obligatory as it is abundant on these dates: his attendance at university graduation ceremonies.
The president only has two of these events planned, at the West Point military academy and at the historic Morehouse College, in Atlanta (Georgia), historically the only center of higher education for black students interested in the liberal arts.
Biden has barely spoken specifically about the protests, a task he has delegated to his spokespersons in the White House. The presidential office has tried to maintain a neutral stance and, while ensuring that it defends freedom of assembly as long as it is peaceful, has also declared itself opposed to any step that could represent an act of anti-Semitism. And he has condemned the student takeover of a building at Columbia University.
“Americans have the right to peaceful protest, as long as the law is followed. And taking a building by force is not (something) peaceful,” Biden’s spokesperson, Karine Jean Pierre, declared this Wednesday at her daily press conference.
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