President Joe Biden on Friday wrot🐼e to the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, calling on them to press Hamas for a hostage deal with Israel, according to a senior administration official, one day after Biden called on Israeli Prime Minister Be♚njamin Netanyahu to redouble efforts to reach a cease-fire in the six-month-old war in Gaza.
The offic🅠ial, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private letters, said Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, will meet Monday with family members of some of the estimated 100 hostage꧂s who are believed to still be in Gaza.
The letters to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Qatar's ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, come as Biden has deployed CIA Director Bill Burns to C💜airo for talks thཧis weekend about the hostage crisis.
White House officials say negotiating a pause in fighting between Israel and Hamꦉas to facilitate the exchange of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel is the only way to put a temporary cease-fire into effect and boost the flow of badly humanitarian aid into the territory.
Biden, in his conversation with Netanyahu, “made clear that everything must be done to secure the release of hostages,ꩵ including American citizens,” and discussed “the importance of fully empowering Israeli negotiators to reach a deal,” according to the official. The first phas🤡e of the proposed deal would secure the release of women and elderly, sick and wounded hostages.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said earlier Friday that Biden underscored the need to get a hostage deal done during the Thursday conversation with Netanyahu that largely focused on Israeli airstrikes that kill𝕴ed seven aid workers with World Central ಌKitchen.
“We are coming up on six🌼 months — six months that these people have been held hostage. And what we have to consider is just the abhorrent conditions" the ho♔stages are being held in, Kirby said. “They need to be home with their families.”
ꦛBiden had expressed optimism for a temporary cease-fire and a hostage deal during the runup to the M💧uslim holy month of Ramadan, but an agreement never materialised.
The White House said in a 🧔statement Thursday following Biden's call with Netanyahu that the US president said reaching an “immediate cease-fire” in exchange for hostages was “essential” and urged Israel to reach such an accord “without delay”.
White House officials acknowledge that Biden has become increasingly frustrated with Israel's prosecut𝕴ion of a grinding war that has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians.
The war in 🐈Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage.
The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, is among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history. Within two months, researchers say, the offensive ♑already has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria's Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine's Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killedꦅ more civilians than the US-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.
