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It's Thursday morning. I'm Olivia Reingold, and this is your Politico Playbook Daily Briefing.

If you can't get behind the Wall Street Journal's paywall, here's a big story they dropped last night.

They're reporting that Hamas and Israel could be

on the brink of a ceasefire coming as early as Friday. Israeli officials are reportedly

moving closer to a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. President Biden with new pressure tonight,

making a fourth phone call now to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This is also shaping up at the test for the Biden administration.

Unfolding today is a big test to see if President Joe Biden's quiet diplomacy is working.

Here's the latest on how the White House is navigating the crisis between Israel and Hamas, now in its second

week with a mounting death toll. On Wednesday afternoon, it looked like Israeli Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu might be ignoring Biden, but then the two got on the phone yesterday

for the fourth time in a week, and Biden went somewhere he hasn't

gone before since the crisis began. The C word. We're talking about a ceasefire. A readout

from the White House says this, quote, the president conveyed to the prime minister that he

expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire.

Another key word there? Today. Combine that with the fact that the readout was missing the

usual boilerplate language about Israel's right to self-defense, and you've almost got a

significant policy change. The New York Times describes those two moves, a call for a ceasefire and a call

for a ceasefire within the next 24 hours as a departure from the Biden administration's recent

approach, which at least publicly, has called for things in the Middle East to, quote,

calm down and de-escalate while avoiding terms like peace talks and ceasefire.

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