From the Liveblog of
Monday, January 6, 2025
Blinken calls for final push to get Gaza hostage-truce deal over ‘finish line’ before Biden leaves office
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken calls for a final push for a Gaza hostage-ceasefire deal before President Joe Biden leaves office, after a Hamas official told Reuters the terror group had cleared a list of 34 hostages as first to be released from captivity in Gaza under a truce.
“We very much want to bring this over the finish line in the next two weeks, the time we have remaining,” Blinken tells a news conference in South Korea, when asked whether a deal was close.
Israel has sent a team of mid-ranking officials to Qatar for talks brokered by Qatari and Egyptian mediators. Some Arabic media reports said Mossad chief David Barnea, who has been leading negotiations, was expected to join them. The Prime Minister’s Office did not comment.
US President-elect Donald Trump has said there will be “hell to pay” in the Middle East if hostages held by Hamas are not freed before his inauguration on January 20, now viewed in the region as an unofficial deadline for a truce deal.
It is believed that 96 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
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.
The Times of Israel Community.