From the Liveblog of
Monday, January 6, 2025
Blinken ‘confident’ Gaza hostage-ceasefire deal will be achieved, either under Biden or after
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken voices confidence that a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal will come together, but possibly after US President Joe Biden leaves office on January 20.
“If we don’t get it across the finish line in the next two weeks, I’m confident that it will get its completion at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, and when it does, it will be on the basis of the plan that President Biden put forward,” Blinken tells reporters in Seoul.
Yesterday, Hamas was said to have agreed with Israel on a list of 34 hostages to be released in the first phase of a potential ceasefire deal, but the Palestinian terror group was refusing to detail who of them was alive, according to multiple reports citing Hamas and Israeli officials.
The Walla news site reported, citing an unnamed senior Israeli official, that Hamas had approved the list in exchange for an “appropriate price” — meaning the number of Palestinian security prisoners to be freed as part of the deal — but by refusing to say who was alive and who wasn’t, made it impossible to determine which price would be appropriate.
The Times of Israel Community.