White House: Sinwar isn’t ‘negotiating in good faith,’ especially after murder of six hostages ‘execution style’

White House National Security spokesman John Kirby blames Hamas for the stalling of talks to close a hostage-ceasefire deal, while also calling for a diplomatic solution amid heightening cross-border tensions between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror group.

“It doesn’t appear that Mr. Sinwar is prepared at all to keep negotiating in good faith, especially after he murdered six hostages in a tunnel, execution style,” Kirby says on ABC’s “This Week.”

The IDF recovered the bodies of six hostages abducted alive by Hamas on October 7 from a tunnel in southern Gaza’s Rafah at the beginning of this month, just days after they were murdered by terrorists.

“It doesn’t appear as if he’s willing to move this forward.”

.@GStephanopoulos: “It appears that the Gaza cease-fire talks have gone cold. Is that right?”

White House's John Kirby: “I would say that we are not achieving any progress here in the last week to two weeks … Not for lack of trying.” https://t.co/D2DfoLK09n pic.twitter.com/xNJwIwBF6T

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) September 22, 2024

In the interview, Kirby also says that a regional military escalation isn’t in Israel’s “best interest,” adding that the United States was “saying this directly to our Israeli counterparts.”

“The tensions are much higher now than they were even just a few days ago,” Kirby says, though he adds, “We still believe that there can be time and space for a diplomatic solution here and that’s what we’re working on.”

The overnight rocket fire reached Kiryat Bialik on the edge of north Israel’s biggest city Haifa, leaving a building in flames, another pockmarked with shrapnel, and vehicles incinerated.

“We’ve been working since the beginning of this conflict, October 8th and on, to try to prevent an escalation, to prevent a broadening of this conflict there in and around Israel, but also in the region,” Kirby says in the ABC interview.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to return residents of northern Israel displaced by nearly a year of fighting near their homes.

An escalating war is “certainly not going to be in the best interest of all those people that Prime Minister Netanyahu says he wants to be able to send back home,” Kirby says.