US: Qatar doing everything it can to free hostages; the impediment is Hamas

WASHINGTON — The US believes that Qatar has done “everything that it can do” to secure the release of the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza.

Doha has come under increasing criticism as the war in Gaza has dragged on, for what critics say has been its failure to use its leverage as host of Hamas’s foreign leaders to pressure the terror group into agreeing to a hostage deal with Israel.

But US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller appears to reject this argument when asked whether Washington is satisfied with the role Qatar has played in mediating between Israel and Hamas.

“Qatar has played an incredibly important role in helping get hostages out already, and they have played an incredibly important role in the back-and-forth negotiations with Hamas over the past few months to try and reach a further ceasefire deal that would get the remaining hostages out,” Miller says.

“When it comes to the impediment to a hostage agreement — it’s not Qatar, it’s not Egypt, it’s not Israel, right now. It is Hamas. It is Hamas that has refused to agree to the deal that is on the table despite the fact that it would achieve much of the things that they have publicly claimed in repeated statements that they’re trying to achieve,” the State Department spokesperson asserts.