Jan. 12 (UPI) — U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke Sunday, their two offices said, as the White House pushes to secure a cease-fire and hostage release deal prior to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration later this month.
The deal, being negotiated in Qatar’s capital of Doha, is based on the three-phase cease-fire deal Biden unveiled in late May and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council in June.
According to a statement from the White House, Biden and Netanyahu spoke about progress made in the talks over the phone.
In the conversation, Biden “stressed the immediate need for a ceasefire in Gaza and return of the hostages with a surge in humanitarian aid enabled by a stoppage in the fighting under the deal,” the White House said.
Netanyahu’s office acknowledged the phone call in a similarly brief statement, saying he and Biden discussed “the progress in the negotiations” and he updated his American counterpart “on the mandate he gave to the negotiating team in Doha in order to advance the release of our hostages.”
The Biden administration has spent months negotiating a deal to halt the 15-month-long Israel-Hamas war and free the roughly 100 Israeli hostages still held by the Iran-proxy militia, and has been pushing to get it done before the White House is handed over to the new Trump administration on Jan. 20.
Israel announced on Saturday it had sent the country’s intelligence service head for the talks, the same day Netanyahu had met with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s incoming U.S. envoy to the Middle East. Trump reportedly wants a hostage deal in place by his inauguration.
White House’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN’s State of the Nation on Sunday that they were “very, very close” to securing a deal while acknowledging that until a deal that nothing is certain.
The final details of a text to be presented to both Hamas and Israel were being finalized, he said, stating that the Biden administration was determined to use every day it had left to get a deal done.
“Can we get it done before the 20th? It is possible but I certainly can’t make any predictions that we will,” he said.
“There is a possibility that this comes together; there is also a possibly, as has happend so many times before, that Hamas, in particular, remains intransigent.”
The war, instigated by Hamas’ bloody attack on Israel, has killed more than 46,565 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded more than 109,000 others, according to Gaza health officials.
On top of the 1,200 Israelis killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, 251 Israelis were taken hostage, of whom fewer than 100 remain in Hamas captivity.
