The Biden administration is considering the possibility of negotiating a deal with Hamas to free 5 Americans detained in Gaza
According to NBC news the administration of President Joe Biden is discussing the possibility of negotiating an agreement with Hamas to release 5 citizens.
NBC quoted two current administration officials and two former senior officials as saying that “Biden administration officials are discussing the possibility of negotiating an agreement with Hamas to secure the release of 5 Americans detained in Gaza, if the current ceasefire talks involving Israel fail”.
The US officials, who were briefed on the discussions, said that such negotiations won’t include Israel and will be conducted through Qatari interlocutors, as usual.
The US officials didn’t say what the United States would offer Hamas in exchange for the release of the American hostages.
However, the US officials said Hamas may have an incentive to strike a unilateral deal with the United States because doing so is likely to further strain US-Israel relations and put additional domestic political pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
One former official said internal discussions also took place in the context of whether the possibility of a unilateral US deal with Hamas might pressure Netanyahu to agree to a version of the current ceasefire proposal.
The five Americans, believed to be held in Gaza, are Aidan Alexander, Saggy Dekel-Chen, Hirsch Goldberg-Bolin, Omar Nutra and Keith Siegel.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday urged Middle East leaders to pressure the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to agree to a ceasefire proposal to halt fighting in Gaza.
Speaking at the start of his tour of the region from Cairo, he said Hamas was the only one that hadn’t accepted the three-stage proposal, which includes the release of hostages and talks to end the fighting, noting that Israel had agreed to it.
Netanyahu is already under increasing pressure from family members of the hostages to reach a deal that would free their loved ones.
After a temporary truce that resulted in a prisoner exchange late last year, Tel Aviv still estimates that there are 120 Israeli prisoners in Gaza, while Hamas announced that more than 70 of them were killed in indiscriminate raids by Israel, which holds at least 9,500 Palestinians in its prisons.
