U.S. President Joe Biden said he did not expect a second Israel-Hamas hostage release deal to be struck in the near future amid intense activity by Qatar and Egypt to conclude such an agreement.
Biden told reporters “There is no expectation at this point,” that there would be a deal soon, but “We are pushing it.”
In a sign that perhaps the issue was advancing despite Biden’s cautionary note, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh paid his first visit to Egypt for more than a month on Wednesday.
Pushing for a deal
It was a rare personal intervention in diplomacy amid what a source described as intensive talks on a new ceasefire to increase the amount of humanitarian aid that reach Gaza and to free more hostages.
Haniyeh, who normally resides in Qatar, typically wades publicly into diplomacy only when progress seems likely.
He last traveled to Egypt in early November before the announcement of the only deal on a ceasefire in the Gaza war so far, a week-long pause that saw the release of 105 of 250 hostages taken by Hamas in its Oct. 7 infiltration into Southern Israel in which it also killed over 1,200 people.
Islamic Jihad, a smaller Palestinian militant group that is also holding hostages in Gaza, said its leader would also visit Egypt in coming days to discuss a possible end to the conflict.
A source briefed on negotiations said envoys were intensively discussing which of the hostages still held by Palestinian Islamist militants in Gaza could be freed in a new truce and what prisoners Israel might release in return.
Israel was insisting all remaining women and infirmed men among hostages be released, the source said, declining to be identified. Palestinians convicted of serious offenses could be on the list of prisoners to be freed by Israel.
Blinken: Israel must remove Hamas, minimize civilian casualties in Gaza
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the issue in negotiating a deal was Hamas. “The question is whether they are willing to resume this effort. But certainly its something that we would welcome, I know that Israel would welcome and the world would welcome, so we will see what they chose to do,” he said.
“We remain actively engaged in seeing if we can get a pause back on,” Blinken stated.
He spoke about the importance of minimizing civilian harm and maximizing humanitarian aid, while he said that the quickest way to end the conflict was for Hamas to surrender. "How can it be that there are no demands made of the aggressor and only demands made of the victim. It would be good if there was a strong international voice pressing Hamas to do what is necesary to end this."
Hamas has asserted that close to 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza war related violence, with several thousand more bodies believed to be trapped under rubble. Israel says over 7,000 of those fatalities are Hamas terrorists.
There remains a huge gulf between the two sides' publicly stated positions on any halt to fighting. Hamas rejects any further temporary pause and says it will discuss only a permanent ceasefire. Israel has ruled that out and says it will agree only limited humanitarian pauses until Hamas is defeated.
"Hamas' stance remains: they don't have a desire for humanitarian pauses. Hamas wants a complete end to the Israeli war on Gaza," a Palestinian official said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated that the war would end only with Hamas eradicated, all hostages freed and Gaza posing no more threat to Israel.
Doing what it takes to eliminate Hamas
"We are continuing the war to the end. It will continue until Hamas is eliminated – until victory.
“Whoever thinks that we will stop is detached from reality. We will not stop the fighting until all of the goals that we have set are achieved: The elimination of Hamas, the release of our hostages and the removal of the threat from Gaza.
“We are attacking Hamas with fierce fire, everywhere, including today. We are also attacking their accomplices near and far,” Netanyahu said, as he hinted at Israeli activity against Iranian backed proxies.
“All Hamas terrorists, from the first to the last, are dead men walking. They have only two possibilities: Surrender or die,” he said.
Israel has faced increasing pressure from its Western allies to curb aits military campaign to oust Hamas from Gaza that has laid waste to much of the densely populated coastal enclave.
The U.S., Israel's closest ally, has stepped up calls in the past week for it to scale down its all-out war into a focused campaign against Hamas leaders and end what Biden has called "indiscriminate bombing" causing huge civilian casualties.
In a serious spillover from the war, Yemen's Houthi forces have been firing missiles and drones at commercial shipping in the Red Sea to underline support from Iran's Arab militia proxies for the Palestinians against Israel, and the U.S. this week set up a multinational force to ward off the attacks.
On Wednesday, the Houthis' leader warned they would strike U.S. warships if their forces were targeted by Washington.
Inside Gaza, Reuters saw wounded victims of Israeli bombing, including at least two small children covered in blood and dust, carried into the Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis. At the hospital morgue, women wearing black abaya robes wailed by bodies laid out in black bags and white shrouds.
Since the last truce collapsed on Dec. 1, the war has entered a more intensive phase, with ground combat previously confined to the northern half of the Gaza Strip now spread across the length of the territory.
International aid groups say Gaza's 2.3 million people have been driven to the brink of catastrophe by wholesale destruction that has driven 90% of them from their homes and left many malnourished and gravely short of clean water and medical care.
In the north, which Israeli forces claimed to have largely subdued last month, fighting has been fiercer than ever. Flames and smoke towered into the sky as seen from across the boundary fence in Israel, as Israeli warplanes pounded the area at dawn.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli forces had besieged its ambulance depot in Jabalia, a northern settlement that has been embattled for weeks. There are 127 people in the facility including workers, displaced people and wounded.
In the south, where most civilians are now sheltering after fleeing other areas, there has been intense fighting around the center of Khan Younis, which Israeli forces have partly stormed.
Hamas has waged guerrilla-style warfare based on a vast web of underground tunnels where it has hidden fighters, weaponry and, Israel says, political leaders and armed-wing commanders.