Gaza hostage deal is not expected soon, says Biden

US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he does not expect an agreement to be reached soon on a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. “We’re pushing,” Biden told reporters during a trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Efforts are being made to try to arrange the release of more hostages, with the heads of the CIA, Israel’s Mossad and Qatar’s prime minister expected to meet and discuss the issue.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, meanwhile, said on Wednesday that the world must put pressure on Hamas, and not just Israel, after widespread criticism of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. “There seems to be silence on what Hamas could do, should do, must do if we want to end the suffering of innocent men, women, and children,” he said. “It would be, I think, good if the world could unite around that proposition as well.”

He expressed his hope that a positive result would be reached on a UN Security Council resolution regarding the war between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza. The US has used its veto consistently to block earlier resolutions.

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Blinken told a press conference in Washington that the US is communicating “in very good faith” with other countries, after the anger of Arab states over his country’s use of its veto power twice against a resolution calling on Israel to end its military operation that it launched after Hamas’s 7 October attack.

“We’ve been working this intensely. I’ve been on the phones about this for the last couple of days,” explained the US official. “I hope we can get to a good place.”

He noted that the humanitarian issue was the sticking point, with Israel insisting on full control of supplies entering the besieged Gaza Strip. “The purpose of the resolution as stated by the countries that put it forward is to facilitate and help expand humanitarian assistance that’s getting into Gaza. And we fully support that. We want to make sure that the resolution in what it calls for and requires actually advances that effort and doesn’t do anything that could actually hurt the delivery of humanitarian assistance, make it more complicated.”

Blinken pointed out that the US has exerted pressure behind the scenes, and has made progress in recent days with the arrival of aid trucks and the opening of a second crossing into Gaza.

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