White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Sunday blamed Hamas for ending the temporary cease-fire agreement with Israel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In an appearance on \u2018Fox News Sunday,\u2019 Kirby told host Shannon Bream that the United States believes eight or nine Americans are still held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, including one woman whose condition and whereabouts are unknown.<\/p>\n
\u2018We just don\u2019t have perfect visibility,\u2019 Kirby said. \u2018We\u2019re at this literally by the hour, and we want to get that [cease-fire] put back in place so that, again, more hostages can come out.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Hamas is the reason that the pause ended, because they refused to put on the list additional women and children that we know that they are holding and they\u2019re refusing to let go,\u2019 Kirby said. \u2018We are working literally by the hour to see if we can get this back on track.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
A weeklong cease-fire that expired Friday facilitated the release of dozens of the 240 Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. But Israel has called its negotiators home and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has committed the Israel Defense Force to removing Hamas from power in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Bream confronted Kirby with remarks from Democratic members of Congress regarding military aid to Israel, including progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., who said recently, \u2018What we are witnessing is the gross violation of human rights in Gaza and that is being done with U.S. military assistance.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018What\u2019s being done with U.S. military and security assistance is helping our friend and partner, Israel, go after a truly genocidal threat, a threat posed by Hamas,\u2019 Kirby said in response. \u2018And I think it\u2019s just too easy as we get further and further and further away from the 7th of October to forget what happened on that day: 1,200 Israeli literally slaughtered, kids in front of their parents, parents in front of their kids. And we\u2019ve got to help Israel eliminate their threat to the Israeli nation and the Israeli people from that threat, from Hamas, and we\u2019re going to keep doing that, absolutely.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recognizing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Kirby said the Israeli forces have been \u2018receptive\u2019 to messages from the United States and altered the way they\u2019ve conducted some operations to spare civilians, even though Hamas militants are said to hide behind civilians in key infrastructure and safe zones.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, Kirby said, \u2018too many\u2019 thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded, while 1 million people have been displaced internally in Gaza. \u2018We\u2019re not blind to the humanitarian crisis, which is why we worked so hard to get that pause in place for seven days so that we could get hostages out and get an accelerated amount of food, water, medicine and fuel into Gaza,\u2019 he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kirby reiterated how Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Israeli counterparts when he was there about the need to \u2018reform\u2019 and \u2018revitalize\u2019 the Palestinian Authority in a way to meet the \u2018aspirations and the needs of the Palestinian people.\u2019 Netanyahu has said Israel does not want to occupy or control Gaza after the conflict ends.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018We agree with them on that,\u2019 Kirby said in response Sunday. \u2018We don\u2019t want to see them occupy Gaza. We don\u2019t think that that is a long-term strategic goal that is really achievable or wise for the Israeli people. We believe that at the core, the future of governance in Gaza has got to be something that the Palestinian people have a vote in, a voice in. That they have governance that it truly representative of them and their aspirations.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kirby said Israel is a sovereign nation and denied that the U.S. was placing \u2018red lines\u2019 on aid.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Israel on Sunday ordered more evacuations in and around Gaza\u2019s second-largest city of Khan Younis, followed by heavy bombardment, as the military\u2019s offensive shifted to the southern half of the territory, where Israeli officials say Hamas leaders are hiding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fears of a wider conflict intensified, as a U.S. warship and multiple commercial ships came under attack Sunday in the Red Sea, the Pentagon said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Associated Press contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Sunday blamed Hamas for ending the temporary cease-fire agreement with Israel.\u00a0 In an appearance on \u2018Fox News Sunday,\u2019 Kirby told host Shannon Bream that the United States believes eight or nine Americans are still held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, including one woman whose condition and <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12453,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12452","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}