US President Joe Biden will likely talk with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu soon, his national security adviser says, as US officials race to reach a Gaza Strip hostage and ceasefire deal before Biden leaves office.
Jake Sullivan told CNN that the parties were “very, very close” to reaching a deal to halt the fighting in the enclave and free the remaining 98 hostages held there but still had to get it across the finish line.
Biden was getting daily updates on the talks in Doha, where Israeli and Palestinian officials have said since Thursday that some progress has been made in the indirect talks between Israel and militant group Hamas, Sullivan said.
“We are still determined to use every day we have in office to get this done,” he said, adding that Biden “is likely, in the near term, to engage with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and we are not, by any stretch of imagination, setting this aside”.
He said there was still a chance to reach an agreement before Biden leaves office on January 20 but that it was also possible “Hamas, in particular, remains intransigent”.
Netanyahu’s office said on Saturday that an Israeli delegation including Mossad Head David Barnea, the head of the Shin Bet domestic security service Ronen Bar and the military’s head of the hostage brief Nitzan Alon had arrived in Qatar for talks.
It is unclear how they will bridge one of the biggest gaps that has persisted throughout previous rounds of talks: Hamas demands an end to the war while Israel says it will not end the war as long as Hamas rules the Gaza Strip and poses a threat to Israelis.
Israel launched its assault in the Gaza Strip after Hamas fighters stormed across its borders in October 2023, killing 1200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, more than 46,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian health officials, with much of the enclave laid to waste and gripped by a humanitarian crisis and most of its population displaced.
Vice president-elect JD Vance told Fox News in an interview taped on Saturday that he expects a deal for the release of US hostages in the Middle East to be announced in the final days of the Biden administration, maybe in the last day or two.
US president-elect Donald Trump has strongly backed Netanyahu’s goal of destroying Hamas.
He has promised to bring peace to the Middle East but has not said how he would accomplish that.
https://thewest.com.au/news/conflict/us-official-says-talks-on-hostage-deal-very-close-c-17366917
