Some of the hostages taken from Israel in October 2023 are now thought to be dead, the White House has said.
The grim acknowledgment comes as Israel and the United States struggle to convince the Hamas terror group to accept a proposed temporary ceasefire to exchange hostages and allow for increased humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said that the deceased are still important and that their bodies should be returned to their families.
“We obviously want all the hostages returned to their families, and we recognize that it’s likely that not all of them are still alive,” Mr. Kirby said during a March 4 press call.
“That doesn’t mean that they aren’t still important to their loved ones.”
Israel’s war in Gaza is approaching the five-month mark with no sure end in sight. Israeli and U.S. leadership have struggled and failed to put together another pause in the fighting following a seven-day ceasefire in November 2023.
Mr. Kirby noted that all sides are engaged in “active conversations” to agree on a new temporary ceasefire but said that Hamas hasn’t suggested a plan of its own.
Under a proposed pause in the fighting, he said, priority would be given to getting the most vulnerable of the hostages out first.
“Israel has put forward a forward-leaning offer and that deal is on the table,” he said. “We urge Hamas to accept that deal so that we can move forward.
“We certainly want an initial focus on the elderly, the sick and the wounded, and women. That’s what our immediate focus is on.”
Hamas fighters abducted more than 250 people on Oct. 7, 2023, as part of a wider terrorist attack that left more than 1,200 dead, including nearly 700 Israeli civilians. More than 130 of those hostages remain in Gaza, with an untold number having died from execution, or as a result of illness or starvation.
Conditions in Gaza have steadily worsened amid Israel’s continued military operations and the associated lack of food, water, medicine, and energy.
A key difficulty at this juncture, Mr. Kirby said, is simply getting Hamas to deliver a list of hostages alive or dead.
He says that he hopes the proposed ceasefire and prisoner exchange would be accepted by Hamas by March 11, when the Islamic holy month of Ramadan begins.
The White House expects more hostages to be exchanged than during the first ceasefire, and that the current offer from Israel is for a six-week period with multiple tranches of prisoner swaps, Mr. Kirby said.
“There’s no shortage of effort that’s being applied here to try to get this done as soon as possible,” he said.
“In this case, we’re talking about more of both [Israeli and Palestinian prisoners] over a longer period of time, and they would be [released] in sequences.”
Mr. Kirby also said that the weeks-long ceasefire would allow for critical humanitarian aid to be delivered to Gaza, where starvation and illness have become commonplace.
He stated, however, that the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is at least partly because of some members of the Israeli government, whom he didn’t name.
“We believe that Israel can and should do more to allow humanitarian assistance to get in unimpeded,” he said.
“There have been incidents where they have not been either able or willing, or maybe both, to keep the [aid] trucks going at an increased level.”
