US: We haven’t released updated bridging proposal because Hamas refusing to engage

The US has not released a new bridging proposal for a hostage deal because Hamas has been unwilling to engage with the latest offer on the table, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller says.

“Several weeks ago, we were quite public about the fact that we had presented a bridging proposal that tried to get both sides to ‘Yes.’ There were a number of implementing details that we needed to work out, but we were in a place where we were looking to present a further proposal that would bridge those remaining differences,” Miller explains.

“What’s happened over the past several weeks is that the mediators that discuss these issues with Hamas — Qatar and Egypt — have not been able to get them to engage at all,” Miller says.

“The reason you have not seen us put forward this [new bridging] proposal is we can’t get a clear answer from Hamas of what they’re willing to entertain and what they’re not willing to entertain,” he adds.

Miller clarifies that Israel has not fully accepted the ceasefire deal either and will have some difficult decisions to make, but the bigger issue is that Hamas “has been unwilling to engage, [whereas] the Israelis are [still] at the table.”