The U.S. is awaiting Hamas’s response to the latest ceasefire and hostage release offer, a White House official said on Monday.
CIA Director Bill Burns was in Cairo, Egypt, over the weekend to participate in the negotiations, which are being brokered by the U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari governments.
“At the end of the weekend, a proposal was submitted to Hamas, and now it’s going to be up to Hamas to come through,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday. “So what the chances are of that, I wouldn’t want to handicap it, except to say that I think it should be plainly obvious, just by the amount of shuttle diplomacy that we’re doing and our counterparts are doing. We’re taking this very, very seriously.”
The intermediary governments have sought to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a deal for months but have no success to show for it after the end of the one-week ceasefire deal in late November. The initial ceasefire deal also had Israel release three times as many Palestinians held in the Israeli prison system, and that stipulation is included in these negotiations.
He declined to provide specifics about this proposal, but the administration’s goal is to come up with a deal that “secures the release of all the hostages and leads to an immediate ceasefire.” In the past, U.S. leaders have promoted a deal that would’ve included a six-week cessation of fighting in exchange for the release of vulnerable hostages and a surge in humanitarian aid into Gaza.
A response could take days due to the communication abilities, or lack thereof, of Hamas’s leaders.
There are still roughly 100 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas or other Gaza-based terrorist organizations, and they have been held against their will for six months. More than 250 people were kidnapped during the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel that prompted the war.
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Of the hostages, five are believed to be Americans. The families of those five are expected to meet with U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Monday night.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday. In discussing a ceasefire agreement as a “deal we might not like, but it’s doable, and therefore it needs to be made,” according to CNN.