US President Joe Biden claimed Monday that Israel would halt its activities in Gaza during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan as part of a deal being negotiated.

“Ramadan’s coming up and there’s 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 interview with late-night comic Seth Meyers on the U.S. network NBC.

“My national security adviser tells me that we are close,” he said in response to a question from the press as he bought ice cream in New York. “We’re not done yet. My hope is by next Monday we’ll have a cease-fire,” US President Biden said on Monday.

Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. have been trying to broker a new cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel in Gaza for weeks, in a deal which should facilitate the release of the Israeli hostages still held in the coastal strip.

However, it is uncertain whether the international mediators will be able to negotiate such a deal by March 10, when Ramadan is due to begin.

The media had previously reported that the difficult negotiations were making no progress. The Israeli television stations Channel 12 and Kan quoted officials as saying that a negotiating framework proposed by the mediators was still not compatible with Hamas’ demands.

Hamas, in turn, accused Israel of blocking the talks.