The president of the United States, Joe Biden, stated on Wednesday that he has “slight hope” regarding the release of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. “I have been deeply involved in advancing the hostage negotiations,” he said.
The president said he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he did not believe the war would end until a two-state solution was reached. “I made it clear to Israel that I think it is a big mistake to occupy Gaza,” he said.
Biden said that the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza since October 7 will stop when the Palestinian Islamist group “does not have the capacity to murder.”
“I think this will stop when Hamas does not have the ability to murder, abuse and just do horrible things to Israelis,” Biden said during the press conference after his bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Bay from San Francisco, and in which according to the American both leaders also spoke about the conflict in Gaza.
Biden stated that, for the moment, he has not set a time limit to ask the Israeli army to cease its land invasion of the Palestinian enclave and insisted that the end of the conflict involves betting on the “two-state solution”, one Jewish and another Arab, in a “realistic” way.
The role of the United States in recent hours has been, according to the American president, to try to mediate with Qatar so that the Palestinian Islamist group accepts the release of some of the more than a hundred hostages that it still holds in captivity since invaded and attacked southern Israel on October 7.
“I have slight hopes (…) I have been deeply involved in advancing the hostage negotiation. I don’t want to get ahead of myself because I don’t know what has happened in the last four hours,” Biden added, alluding to the time he had met with Xi .
The Gaza Health Ministry estimated this Wednesday that at least 11,500 people have died since the conflict reopened, including 7,870 women and children.
