The US government said on Sunday that an agreement had been reached with Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas to suspend the bombing in Gaza and release some of the 240 hostages.
Deputy National Security Adviser Jonathan Finer told NBC News that the United States is “closer” than ever to reaching an agreement, although he declined to specify the number of hostages released, saying only that it would be “well over a dozen.”
“What I can say at this point is that some of the outstanding points of disagreement, very complicated and very sensitive negotiations, have been reduced,” Finer said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
However, he gave no details of the deal, brokered by Qatar, which aims to release some of the 240 hostages held by the Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“We will not summarize all the details of what is still being discussed. We believe that [o acordo] It must be done, there are people trapped in unacceptable conditions in Gaza, including some Americans, and they must be allowed to return home.” he claimed.
The deputy national security adviser also declined to go into details about a possible ceasefire, but stressed that it is necessary to implement the agreement, otherwise “it would involve moving hostages over a very dangerous battlefield in Gaza.”
“Without going into the duration, one of the things that the sides themselves have said, even publicly, is that this could, and probably would, include an extended period of a break in fighting of several days,” said he, emphasizing that this break would also have “the important benefit of facilitating the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza.”
“This is a priority in all circumstances, even if there is no agreement on the hostages,” he stressed.
On Saturday, the US government said it “continues to work hard” to reach an agreement between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas to release the hostages and mark a pause in the fighting.
“We have not yet reached an agreement, but we continue to work hard” to do so, White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday.
The spokeswoman’s response came after the Washington Post reported that an agreement had been reached between the sides that provided for the release of hostages in exchange for a five-day break in the fighting.
The Islamist movement Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, using thousands of rockets and armed militiamen, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages.
In response, Israel declared war on Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007 and is classified as terrorist by the EU and the United States, by bombing several of the group’s infrastructure facilities in Gaza and imposing a total siege of the territory, where the water supply is shut off. supplies, fuel and electricity.
Israeli bombings from the air, land and sea caused between 16,000 and 12,000 deaths, mostly civilians, in the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas data.
The UN indicated that more than two-thirds of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million residents had been displaced by the war, with the majority fleeing south.
Source: DN
