‘On the brink’: Biden, White House officials signal cautious hope about hostage deal
Blinken: ‘We're at a point, as I said, where we are closer than we've ever been. And we'll have to see if Hamas can finally say yes’

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President Joe Biden delivers remarks from the Rose Garden at the White House on November 26, 2024 in Washington, DC. Biden spoke on the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah.
With just a week remaining in office, President Joe Biden and other senior officials in his administration are conveying a new sense of optimism about reaching a hostage-release and cease-fire deal before President-elect Donald Trump takes office next week.
“We’re on the brink of a proposal that I laid out in detail months ago finally coming to fruition,” Biden said in a speech on Monday at the State Department. Biden spoke on Sunday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and on Monday he had conversations with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar.
According to Israeli officials, a temporary cease-fire in Gaza would result in the release of 33 hostages, mostly elderly people, women and the injured. The number of Palestinian prisoners Israel is expected to release remains unclear, although Israeli officials confirmed that terrorists convicted of murder are among them.
Sixteen days after the initial cease-fire goes into effect, talks about a longer-term end to the fighting and the release of the remaining hostages would begin. The Israeli officials said they believe at least 36 of the 98 hostages in Gaza are dead.
Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East on the National Security Council, has been in Doha, Qatar, for a week, working closely on the issue with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s pick for Middle East envoy. U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Tony Blinken both attributed some of the progress toward reaching a deal to the involvement of Witkoff and the support of Trump.
“I think Steve Witkoff has been a terrific partner in this, and also President-elect Trump in making clear that he wants to see this deal go forward, and go forward before Jan. 20,” Blinken said Monday in an interview with NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Sullivan acknowledged that the White House has expressed hope for cease-fire deals several times over the past year, but none of them materialized.
“There has been a little bit of a Lucy-and-the-football quality, and we thought we got really close, and then it just didn’t happen,” Sullivan said, referring to the fictional character Lucy in the “Peanuts” comics who would hold out a football for Charlie Brown to kick, only to pull it away — always — at the last minute.
“But I haven’t stood at this podium and said anything particularly optimistic about a hostage deal in quite some time, and that’s because we haven’t been in the position that I think we are in today. Why is that? It’s because the gaps have fundamentally narrowed on the key issues,” Sullivan said, pointing to progress made on the prisoner exchange front, on specific details about the posturing of Israeli forces as they pull back in Gaza and on plans to increase humanitarian aid to the Strip.
“These things now — on paper, the gaps between the two sides are slowly getting removed, one by one, and issues are closing,” said Sullivan. He attributed the closing of these gaps to two related factors: “Israel has achieved its substantial military objectives in Gaza, and Hamas has suffered catastrophic losses,” added Sullivan.
As of Monday afternoon, no one was willing to say the agreement was a done deal, wary of the reality that previous agreements fell through. But across the board, the message from the Biden administration is a hopeful one.
“Time and again, that’s been delayed or derailed by some event. But now we’re at a point, as I said, where we are closer than we’ve ever been. And we’ll have to see if Hamas can finally say yes,” said Blinken.
Biden, aware that the clock is ticking for him, made clear how he’ll approach his final days: “I have learned from many years of public service to never, never, never, ever give up,” he said.