WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Monday said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not doing enough to secure a deal for the release of hostages taken by Palestinian armed group Hamas.
Asked by reporters at the White House – where Biden was arriving for a meeting with US negotiators – if he thought the Israeli leader was doing enough on the issue, the president responded: “No.”
Biden’s meeting with the negotiators on the hostage-release deal comes after the deaths on Saturday of six captives in Gaza, including an American citizen.
The president said negotiators were “very close” to a final proposal to be presented to Israel and Hamas.
Israel recovers hostage bodies from Gaza tunnel as West Bank violence rages
Biden’s schedule was revised to make time for the White House meeting, which was also to be attended by Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running to succeed him in November’s presidential election.
A White House statement said he and Harris would meet “with the U.S. hostage deal negotiating team following the murder of American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages by Hamas on Saturday, and discuss efforts to drive towards a deal that secures the release of the remaining hostages.”
The United States, along with fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar, has spent months pushing for a hostage-prisoner exchange and ceasefire in the war in Gaza.
The Palestinian group seized 251 hostages during the October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the war, 97 of whom remain in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Scores of hostages were released during a one-week truce in November.
A Israeli court on Monday ordered a halt to a strike called by the country’s largest union aimed at ramping up pressure on Netanyahu’s government to secure the release of the remaining captives.
Hostage relatives and advocates have accused Netanyahu’s administration of not doing enough to bring the captives back alive, and have called for an immediate ceasefire.
In addition to the taking of hostages, Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
More than 40,786 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip since the war began, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Most of the dead are women and children according to UN human rights office.
Comments