President Joe Biden said Monday (3) that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not doing enough to secure a deal to release hostages held in Gaza by Hamas.
Biden also said the US was close to presenting a final proposal to negotiators working on a ceasefire and hostage agreement.
The US president was speaking to reporters at the White House after Israeli forces recovered the bodies of six hostages, including 23-year-old American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, from a tunnel in Gaza over the weekend.
The Israeli military said they were recently killed by Palestinian Hamas militants.
That sparked criticism of the Biden administration’s ceasefire strategy in Gaza and increased Israeli pressure on Netanyahu to bring the remaining hostages home.
Asked if he thought Netanyahu was doing enough to reach a hostage deal, Biden said “No.” He did not elaborate on his comments.
Netanyahu appeared to react when asked about Biden’s comments, saying pressure should be applied to Hamas, not Israel, especially after the hostage deaths.
“And now, after this, we are asked to show seriousness? We are asked to make concessions? What message does this send to Hamas? It says, kill more hostages,” he told a news conference in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu said he did not believe Biden or anyone serious about peace would ask Israel to make more concessions and that instead it was Hamas that needed to do so.
Asked if he planned to present a final hostage deal to both sides this week, Biden told reporters: “We’re very close to that.”
“Hope springs eternal,” he added when asked if the deal would succeed.
Biden said later that night that he plans to speak with Netanyahu “eventually,” but did not specify a clear timeline when asked. Biden and Netanyahu have spoken several times amid Israel’s war in Gaza.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris also met with the U.S. hostage negotiating team, during which the president expressed “devastation and outrage” over the hostage killings, and they discussed next steps in efforts to free the remaining hostages, the White House said.
Biden’s fresh criticism of Netanyahu comes as he and Harris, who replaced the president as the Democratic leader in the Nov. 5 election, face growing calls for decisive action to end Israel’s nearly 11-month war in Gaza.
The conflict has sown divisions among Democrats, with many progressives pressing Biden to restrict or at least impose conditions on U.S. arms supplies to Israel, Washington’s main ally in the Middle East.
Israel and Hamas respond to Biden
Senior Israeli sources said it was “remarkable” that Biden was pressing Netanyahu on a hostage deal rather than Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
In response to the Israeli comment, a US official said that while Biden made clear that Hamas was to blame for the hostage deaths, “he is also urging the Israeli government to secure the release of the remaining missing hostages.”
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, said Biden’s criticism of Netanyahu was “an American acknowledgment that Netanyahu was responsible for undermining efforts to reach an agreement.”
He said the group would respond positively to a proposal that could secure a permanent ceasefire and Israel’s full withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave.
Netanyahu, who has accused Hamas of obstructing any deal, said over the weekend that “those who kill hostages do not want a deal.”
Israeli protesters took to the streets for a second day on Monday, and the largest labor union launched a general strike to pressure the government to reach a deal to return the hostages.
Thousands of pro-Palestinian activists who oppose US support for Israel held a protest in New York City on Monday.
Months of on-and-off negotiations brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt have so far failed to reach an agreement on the Gaza proposal put forward by Biden in May.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-ruled enclave killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the local Health Ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a famine and prompting allegations of genocide at the World Court, which Israel denies.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Matt Spetalnick; Additional reporting by James Mackenzie in Jerusalem, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Kanishka Singh and David Shepardson in Washington and Steve Holland in Detroit)
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This content was originally published in Biden says US is close to “final proposal” to free hostages in Gaza on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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