In Turkey, Blinken reports ‘encouraging signs’ Gaza hostage-truce deal is possible
Secretary of state says DC appreciates Ankara’s ‘voice with Hamas’ after terror group reportedly agrees to temporary IDF presence in Gaza, provided list of hostages to be released
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that he had discussed the importance of achieving a hostage-ceasefire deal between Israel and the Hamas terror group in meetings with Turkey’s president and foreign minister, and expressed some optimism about the prospects.
“We’ve seen in the last couple of weeks more encouraging signs that [a deal] is possible,” Blinken said in Ankara, on his twelfth trip to the Middle East since war broke out last October, when Hamas attacked Israel.
The American diplomat’s comments came the morning after a report that Hamas had eased some of its demands and provided Israel with a list of hostages to be released in the first phase of an agreement. They also came as US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was in the midst of yet another Mideast trip to push for a deal.
Sullivan, who is also set to travel to key mediator countries Egypt and Qatar during this trip, yesterday denied assertions that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was stalling to try to reach a deal after US President-elect Donald Trump enters office on January 20. Sullivan said his goal was to be able to close a deal by the end of December.
The US president-elect has said repeatedly that he wants the war in Gaza to end by the time he returns to the White House, and threatened that there will be “hell to pay” for anyone in the region who is still holding hostages when he is inaugurated.
Blinken said on Friday that he had spoken with both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan about “the imperative of Hamas saying yes to the agreement that’s possible to finally help bring this to an end.”
“We appreciate very much the role that Turkey can play in using its voice with Hamas, to try to bring this to a conclusion,” Blinken said.
Turkey is an outspoken supporter of Hamas and has frequently praised the Iran-backed terror group’s October 7, 2023 attack which started the ongoing war, when thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
The country hosts several Hamas officials, and was also expected to absorb more of them when Qatar expelled the terror group’s leadership last month, reportedly under pressure from the US.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Hamas had given in to an Israeli demand that the IDF remain in Gaza temporarily, after demanding for long months that it would not agree to a deal unless it included a permanent end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the enclave. Hamas has also provided mediators with a list of hostages that it would release in the first phase of a new deal, the Journal reported.
The report added that Israeli negotiators were pushing for more hostages to be released in the initial phase of the ceasefire. At the same time, it said they had agreed to a gradual withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border. Hamas has also reportedly agreed that it would not have any involvement in running the Palestinian side of the Rafah Crossing between Egypt and Gaza.
A source familiar told The Times of Israel that Mossad chief David Barnea met with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani in Doha on Wednesday to discuss a potential hostage release and Gaza ceasefire deal, confirming an Axios report.
According to the WSJ, the proposal being negotiated would see up to 30 hostages released in a 60-day ceasefire in exchange for which Israel would release Palestinian security prisoners from its prisons and up the amount of humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip.
Numerous attempts to reach a new hostage deal have repeatedly failed over the last year or so as Israel and Hamas have accused each other of sabotaging efforts and have refused to budge on key issues.
However, negotiators have hoped to use the momentum of a ceasefire deal between Israel and the Hezbollah terror group last month, as well as the recent fall of the Iran-backed regime in Syria last weekend, and Trump’s election win in the US, to reach an agreement.
It is believed that 96 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023, remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 38 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
