TEL AVIV: Visiting US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared prepared to negotiate a deal for the release of hostages held in Gaza and a ceasefire.
“We’re now looking to close a hostage release deal and a ceasefire (in Gaza). It’s time to finish the job and bring all of the hostages home… I got the sense from the prime minister he’s ready to do a deal,” Sullivan said at a press conference at the Tel Aviv annex of the US embassy in Jerusalem, after meeting Netanyahu.
There has been growing optimism that a new round of talks for a ceasefire and hostage release deal might succeed, with key mediator Qatar talking of new “momentum” last week.
Some of Netanyahu’s critics at home and abroad have accused him of stalling in negotiations, while Israel has repeatedly blamed Hamas for delays.
Sullivan said that Hamas’s approach to the negotiations had changed, attributing it to the overthrow of their ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the ceasefire that went into effect in the war between Israel and another ally, Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Hamas, Hezbollah and Assad have all been backed by Iran.
“I do believe the ceasefire in Lebanon has generated a different context,” said Sullivan, citing “the loss of Iran’s client state in Syria”.
He added that “Israel’s military progress against Hamas’s infrastructure formations and senior leaders has contributed to that context” too.
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In recent months, multiple Hamas leaders have been killed, including its top two figures Yahya Sinwar in Gaza and Ismail Haniyeh in an explosion in Tehran.
“The balance of power in the Middle East has changed significantly, and not in the way that Sinwar, or (slain Hezbollah chief Hassan) Nasrallah or Iran had planned”, Sullivan said.
“We are now faced with a dramatically reshaped Middle East in which Israel is stronger, Iran is weaker.”
Sullivan added that previously Hamas “was waiting for lots of other actors and forces to come to the rescue”, but the Lebanon ceasefire “decoupled” the conflicts on Israel’s southern and northern fronts.
“And from that moment forward, we’ve had a different character to the negotiations” on Gaza, he said.
Sullivan said he would travel onwards to Qatar and Egypt – both longtime mediators between Israel and Hamas – in a bid to secure progress in negotiations.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Hamas abducted 251 hostages, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,835 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
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