A US envoy will seek to advance a hostage deal and press for assurances from Israel on a Rafah offensive in a trip this week, the White House said Tuesday.
Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, will hold talks Wednesday in Egypt and Thursday in Israel, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
The trip comes as Qatar and Egypt are mediating a proposal to free hostages seized during the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel in return for a pause in Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
McGurk will hold talks “to see if we can’t get this hostage deal in place,” Kirby told reporters.
Israel has rebuffed repeated calls to drop plans for an offensive in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city where some 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering, many in makeshift tents. Israel says Rafah is Hamas’s last military stronghold and the terror group’s leaders and some of the hostages are likely there.
McGurk will reiterate US President Joe Biden’s concern about an operation in Rafah without protections for civilians, Kirby said.
“Under the current circumstances, without properly accounting for the safety and security of those refugees, we continue to believe that an operation in Rafah would be a disaster,” he said.
Kirby cited McGurk’s travel as he defended the latest US veto of a UN Security Council resolution that would have called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — a stance rejected by Israel.
“I think most of the people around the world would love to see those hostages home with their families. And if we just voted, went along, with this resolution, the chances of doing that would be greatly reduced,” Kirby said.
The war started when Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on October 7 killing some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians in their homes and at a music festival.
Hamas terrorists also took about 253 hostages — 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 30 presumed dead, according to Israel.
Israel launched a ground offensive aimed at rescuing the hostages and destroying Hamas.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says that more than 29,000 people have been killed. The figures provided by the health ministry cannot be independently verified and include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 12,000 operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.