Netanyahu not doing enough to secure hostage agreement: Biden

Biden was speaking to reporters at the White House after Israeli forces over the weekend recovered the bodies of six hostages, including 23-year-old American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, from a tunnel in Gaza.

That has sparked criticism of the Biden administration’s Gaza ceasefire strategy and ratcheted up pressure on Netanyahu from Israelis to bring the remaining hostages home.

Asked whether he thought Netanyahu was doing enough to reach a hostage deal, Biden said “No”.

Netanyahu appeared to push back when asked about Biden’s comments, saying pressure should be applied to Hamas, not Israel, particularly after the hostages’ deaths.

“And now after this we’re asked to show seriousness? We’re asked to make concessions? What message does this send Hamas? It says, kill more hostages,” he told a news conference in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu stated he did not believe Biden or anyone serious about achieving peace would ask Israel to make more concessions and that instead it was Hamas that needed to do so.

Asked if he was planning to present a final hostage deal to both sides this week, Biden told reporters: “We’re very close to that.”

“Hope springs eternal,” he added when asked whether a deal would be successful.

Biden stated later in the evening that he plans to talk to Netanyahu “eventually” but did not specify a clear timeline when asked. Biden and Netanyahu have spoken several times amid Israel’s war in Gaza.

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris also met with the US hostage negotiation team, during which the president expressed “devastation and outrage” at the hostages’ murders, and they discussed the next steps in efforts to free the remaining captives, the White House announced.

Biden’s fresh criticism of Netanyahu comes as he and Harris, who has replaced the president at the top of the Democratic ticket for the Nov. 5 election, face increased calls for decisive action to end Israel’s nearly 11-month-old war in Gaza.

The conflict has sown divisions among Democrats, with many progressives pressing Biden to restrict or at least place conditions on US weapon supplies to Israel, Washington’s chief Middle East ally.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has since killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court.

Responding to Biden’s remarks on Netanyahu “not doing enough” during ceasefire talks, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri stressed the comments are an acknowledgement that Israel’s leader is undermining efforts.

Any proposal for a permanent ceasefire and complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza would be received positively, Abu Zuhri added.

Another senior Hamas leader said Netanyahu’s new conditions, which did not exist previously, demonstrated that he has no desire to reach a ceasefire agreement in Gaza that allows for a hostage-prisoner swap.

“What became clear to all parties following the negotiations is that the occupation (Israeli government) led by Netanyahu doesn’t want to reach a deal,” Hussam Badran, responsible for the group’s national relations file, told Anadolu.

He added that “whenever there is a kind of proposal or consensus between us and the mediators, we find that Netanyahu is putting new conditions that didn’t exist in the past”.