The Hamas execution of six hostages in Gaza last weekend has complicated efforts to finalize a ceasefire deal but has increased the urgency to do so, US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby told reporters on Thursday.
“We've suffered yet another huge setback here.” Kirby said, but that “doesn't mean we're not going to keep trying.” He focused, as other US officials have in the past day, on the complications around the exchange of up to 32 hostages for the release of Palestinian security prisoners and terrorists held in Israeli jails.
“The exchange of prisoners has not been agreed to, and that is really the heart of this deal,” Kirby stated.
Hamas not only killed hostages over the weekend but also changed some of the terms of the exchange, he said.
Kirby said that talks were continuing from the negotiators' home countries but that no follow-up common meeting had been planned in a single location as had taken place in the past weeks in Cairo and Doha.
Negotiations should continue
“I can't speak to the in the motivation to murder those hostages, but we still believe that as tragic as that was, and it certainly was tragic, that the ceasefire negotiations can and should continue,” he said.
There is now point-to-point “communication between us and our counterparts in Qatar and Egypt and, of course, Israel, to try to still see if we can move this thing forward,” he said.
“If there's compromise, if there's leadership… we can still get this deal. And that's what we're focused on right now, is trying to hammer out the differences that still exist between what Hamas says it wants and what Israel says it needs,” Kirby stated.