American pressure: US President Joe Biden confirmed last night (between Tuesday and Wednesday) that he asked Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for a truce in the fighting in Gaza. According to him, the request came up in a conversation between the two held last Monday.
At the same time, the spokesman for the National Security Council, John Kirby, said that the American administration "supports a temporary cease-fire that will be used for specific purposes - including efforts to secure the release of the hostages held by Hamas."
Last night, more details were published on the Walla website about the American proposal, which according to the report includes a three-day pause in the fighting in Gaza. According to the proposal, during these days Hamas will release between 10 and 15 abductees, and will use the three days of the truce to verify the identity of all the abductees in its hands and in the hands of other parties in the Gaza Strip, and will forward the list of their names.
On the other hand, Hamas claimed last night that the organization is ready to release 12 hostages of foreign citizenship - but Israel refused. Senior Israeli and American officials said that Netanyahu told Biden in their conversation that he did not trust Hamas to keep its word and release the abductees, and made it clear that Israel would not be able to resume fighting after three days of a ceasefire. He also mentioned that Hamas had already violated ceasefires and attacked IDF forces during Operation Protective Edge.
Following the report, Netanyahu explicitly said in his statement yesterday that "there will be no ceasefire without the release of the abductees - we will not stop until victory. The military action is an essential part of the effort to return them." Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also addressed the issue in his statement and said that "recently the words humanitarian pause have been heard, for me a humanitarian pause is first of all our abductees in Gaza. For me a humanitarian pause is people who are in Gaza at the hands of savages. There will be no humanitarian pause without the return of abductees."
