Report: US to present final ‘take it or leave it’ deal offer, says hostages’ execution casts doubt on Hamas’s seriousness

The United States has been working with Egypt and Qatar to put together one final outline for a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and the Hamas terror group, the Washington Post reports, citing an unnamed senior official in US President Joe Biden’s administration.

The “take it or leave it” offer was in the works before Israel discovered the bodies of six young hostages over the weekend, and if rejected may spell the end of American mediation efforts, the report says.

“You can’t keep negotiating this. This process has to be called at some point,” the official is quoted as saying.

Referring to the discovery of the hostages’ bodies, the official adds: “Does it derail the deal? No. If anything, it should add additional urgency in this closing phase, which we were already in.” However, the official acknowledges that the list of hostages to be released and the Palestinian security prisoners to be freed in exchange now have to be painstakingly renegotiated.

The official says the US agrees with Israel’s findings that the hostages were executed by Hamas shortly before the bodies’ discovery. They say this “calls into question” the terror group’s seriousness in the negotiations.

“US officials are going to be burning up the phones over the next 48 hours to see if a deal can still be reached,” a second unnamed senior US official is quoted as saying.