US President Joe Biden on Monday said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not doing enough to secure a deal for the release of hostages taken by Palestinian armed group Hamas.
Asked by reporters at the White House — where Biden was arriving for a meeting with US negotiators — if he thought the Israeli leader was doing enough on the issue, the president responded: “No.”
Biden’s meeting with the negotiators on the hostage-release deal comes after the deaths on Saturday of six captives in Gaza, including an American citizen.
“President Biden expressed his devastation and outrage at the murder, and reaffirmed the importance of holding Hamas’s leaders accountable,” a White House statement said after the meeting.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris — who is running to succeed him in November’s US presidential election — were briefed by negotiators “on the status of the bridging proposal outlined by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt,” the statement said.
Ahead of the meeting, Biden had said negotiators were “very close” to a final proposal to be presented to Israel and Hamas.
Vice President Harris said the killing of the six hostages was “a brutal, barbaric act by Hamas terrorists.”
“Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. It is long past time for a ceasefire and hostage deal. We need to bring the hostages home and end the suffering in Gaza,” she said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
The White House said the briefing had been attended by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA Director William Burns, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and other senior US officials.
The United States, along with fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar, has spent months pushing for a hostage-prisoner exchange and ceasefire in the war in Gaza.
With AFP
