US President Joe Biden on Friday wrote to the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, calling on them to press Hamas for a hostage deal with Israel, a senior administration official said, according to The Associated Press.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Biden’s national security adviser will meet Monday with family members of some of the estimated 100 hostages who are believed to still be in Gaza.
The letters to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, come as Biden has deployed CIA Director Bill Burns to Cairo for talks this weekend about the hostage crisis.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said earlier Friday that Biden underscored the need to get a hostage deal done during a Thursday conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We are coming up on six months — six months that these people have been held hostage. And what we have to consider is just the abhorrent conditions” the hostages are being held in, Kirby said, according to AP. “They need to be home with their families.”
Israel and Hamas have been holding indirect talks in an attempt to achieve a ceasefire and bring about the release of hostages held by Hamas but there has not been a breakthrough thus far.
Israel had said it was interested only in a temporary truce to free hostages. Hamas has said it will let them go only as part of a deal to permanently end the war.
Israel and Hamas have been holding indirect talks in an attempt to achieve a ceasefire and bring about the release of hostages held by Hamas but there has not been a breakthrough thus far.
Israel had said it was interested only in a temporary truce to free hostages. Hamas has said it will let them go only as part of a deal to permanently end the war.
Earlier this week, a senior diplomatic official in Israel expressed optimism that a deal to return the hostages held by Hamas is possible in the near future.
"If Hamas is interested in a deal - we can move forward. We have come a long way this time as well, there is potential for progress in the coming days," said the source.
(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)