Israel is continuing the war in Gaza, even though the U.S. doesn't see where further progress can be made, and this is hampering efforts to gain the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said, according to Israel's Channel 12.
"We want to bring the hostages home, but Israel is not willing to end the war," Witkoff said in a meeting with hostage families, according to the report on Sunday. "Israel is prolonging it despite the fact that we don’t see where else we can go and that an agreement must be reached."
Witkoff did add an optimistic message, saying that "there is currently a window of opportunity that we hope Israel and all the mediators will take advantage of. We are putting pressure on all the mediators and doing everything we can to bring the hostages home."
Channel 12 also pointed out that the families of the hostages said they hadn't heard this kind of criticism from Witkoff regarding Israeli government policy.
This comes as Israel has vowed to launch a new, intensive ground operation in Gaza if there is no agreement on the hostages by the end of President Donald Trump's visit to the Middle East this week.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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