Harris: Progress in ceasefire is meaningless unless a deal is reached

US Vice President Kamala Harris said in an interview with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday that there has been some progress on a Gaza ceasefire deal but it is "meaningless" unless a deal is actually reached.

“Close means that a lot of the details have been worked out ... but it is meaningless unless a deal is actually reached. So I don't want to suggest to you that we should be applauded for getting close at times to a deal," Harris told Colbert.

"We must have a ceasefire and a hostage deal as immediately as possible," she added.

The United States has been pushing an outline for a ceasefire and hostage release deal that President Joe Biden first laid out in May, but Hamas has continuously rejected every proposal that has been presented to it.

Last month, Hamas once again said that its negotiators reiterated the group’s readiness to implement an "immediate" ceasefire with Israel in Gaza based on a previous US proposal without new conditions from any party.

Despite Hamas’ rejection of all previous proposals, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken downplayed pessimism over the prospects of a hostage release deal, saying that the US will present a new proposal for a deal “very soon”.

Several weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that US officials now believe that a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas is unlikely to occur before Biden's term concludes in January.

The report, which cited senior figures in the White House, State Department, and Pentagon—without naming them—suggests that while progress has been made in the talks, key issues remain unresolved.

“No deal is imminent,” one of the US officials said. “I'm not sure it ever gets done.”

President Biden’s Middle East Coordinator and National Security Council member Brett McGurk told the Israeli American Council (IAC) National Summit in late September that Israel had agreed to a deal including the release of six hostages but “three we were negotiating were killed in a tunnel underneath Rafah. That said a lot about the willingness of Hamas to do a deal.”

McGurk added that Hamas leader Yahaya Sinwar “is the obstacle to the deal” and stated that ultimately, “this war will not end until the hostages come home, that’s been a principle for some time.”