Ahead of talks in Cairo, US President Joe Biden on Friday requested assistance from the leaders of Egypt and Qatar to persuade Hamas to accept an agreement with Israel, according to an American official.
A temporary peace in the Gaza Strip and the release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian detainees detained in Israeli jails are the goals of weeks of secret negotiations between the United States, Egypt, and Qatar.
The White House announced earlier on Friday that talks would take place in Cairo over the course of the weekend, but it declined to corroborate reports in US media that Bill Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Mossad chief David Barnea, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, and Egypt’s chief intelligence officer Abbas Kamel would also be present.
In a phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, Biden “made clear that everything must be done to secure the release of hostages, including American citizens, now held by Hamas terrorists for nearly six months,” a senior official in the Biden administration told AFP under embargo.
The official said that Biden on Friday “wrote letters to the President of Egypt and the Emir of Qatar on the state of the talks and he urged them to secure commitments from Hamas to agree to and abide by a deal.”
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby had earlier told reporters that Biden’s call with Netanyahu included discussions on “getting a hostage deal done, empowering his negotiators to come to (a) conclusion on this.”
“This basic fact remains true: There would be a ceasefire in Gaza today had Hamas simply agreed to release this vulnerable category of hostages — the sick, wounded, elderly, and young women,” the US official said Friday evening.
Hamas launched a shock attack on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
About 250 captives were also taken by Palestinian terrorists; of them, about 130 are still in Gaza, 34 of whom the Israeli army claims are dead.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza claims that over 33,000 Palestinians have died as a result of Israel’s retaliatory attack, the majority of them were women and children.
