Negotiations are ongoing in Cairo to reach a ceasefire-for-hostages deal with Hamas, despite the hundreds of rockets that Hezbollah launched at Israel on Sunday after the Jewish state thwarted a major attack, the White House said.
John Kirby, the White House national security communications advisor, told reporters at a briefing on Monday that the Biden administration believes talks in Cairo are still moving forward.
“There continues to be progress, and our team on the ground continues to describe the talks as constructive,” Kirby said. “Despite the rocket and drone attack by Hezbollah over the course of the weekend, which Israel did a terrific job defending against, it has not affected the actual work on the ground by the teams trying to get this ceasefire deal in place.”
A reporter asked why negotiations had appeared to break down. Kirby said leaders and high-level mediators had departed from the talks to make way for more practical conversations.
“The talks actually progressed to a point where they felt like the next logical step was to have working groups at lower levels sit down to hammer out these finer details,” he said.
One unresolved element the working groups are grappling with is how the mechanics would work for Hamas to release hostages and for Israel to exchange Palestinian prisoners held in jail. The negotiations also addressed who would be released and on what kind of timetable.
Kirby rejected the idea that talks had broken down, insisting that the Biden administration continues to believe that a deal is just as urgently needed as when U.S. President Joe Biden outlined the proposal in May.
“We want to get it done as soon as possible,” he said. “I think we’re all watching what’s going on in the region writ large very, very closely and monitoring the situation. We don’t want to see an all-out war, and we’re doing everything we can to try to prevent that.”
“We’re maintaining a pretty robust force posture there to be able to defend ourselves and defend Israel should it come to that. Hopefully, it won’t,” he added. “We want to get this ceasefire deal as soon as possible. We haven’t let our interest in doing that wane.”
“We haven’t taken our foot off the gas,” he said.
After Hezbollah claimed that its attack was a “success” and completed, Kirby said that Iran continues to be “postured and prepared” to strike the Jewish state.
“It’s not something we take lightly. We look at it every day,” Kirby said. “It’s a dynamic situation. We have to treat it like that.”
