President Biden remains “personally engaged” in securing a Gaza cease-fire and hostage deal despite his public grumbles about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas’ recent murder of six hostages, the White House said Tuesday.
For weeks, U.S. negotiators have been working with Egypt and Qatar to secure the release of hostages taken by Palestinian militants in Hamas on Oct. 7.
“Our team is still working to try to get this to closure,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
“We are still actively working on this,” Mr. Kirby said. “We’re gonna do what we can to get a deal done.”
Mr. Kirby was unable to provide a timeline of when a deal might be struck but repeatedly pointed to Mr. Biden’s involvement in the talks with his team and global leaders.
Mr. Biden appears to be running out of patience with Mr. Netanyahu.
Asked Sunday if his Israeli counterpart was doing enough to secure a deal, Mr. Biden responded, flatly: “No.”
“We are not giving up. We are going to continue to push as hard as we can,” Mr. Biden said.
The deaths of the six hostages over the weekend, including 23-year-old Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, sparked an unprecedented round of demonstrations in cities across Israel.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets Sunday and Monday to protest Mr. Netanyahu’s handling of the hostage crisis, which has dragged on for nearly 11 months after Hamas’ attack last fall on Israel, which killed more than 1,200 Israelis and resulted in the taking of more than 250 hostages.
Roughly 100 hostages were freed last year but over 100 remain, enduring months of captivity.
Mr. Kirby said the U.S. retains hope of securing the hostages who are still alive.
“It requires compromise,” he said, “and it requires leadership from everybody,”
• Ben Wolfgang contributed to this story.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.