Biden stresses need for Gaza truce in call with Netanyahu
· RTE.ieIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with outgoing US President Joe Biden, updating him on progress in negotiations to reach a hostage release deal in Gaza.
A readout from Mr Biden's office confirmed the call and said that the president "stressed the immediate need for a ceasefire in Gaza and return of the hostages with a surge in humanitarian aid enabled by a stoppage in the fighting under the deal".
Mr Netanyahu's office said the prime minister informed Mr Biden about how the talks were progressing.
"The prime minister discussed with the American president the progress in the negotiations for the release of our hostages and updated him on the mandate he has given to the negotiating team in Doha, aimed at advancing the release of the hostages," Mr Netanyahu's office said in a statement.
The two leaders spoke a day after Mr Netanyahu's office announced that Israel was sending a delegation of senior officials to Qatar for the negotiations.
The announcement followed a meeting in Jerusalem with US President-elect Donald Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, a representative of Mr Biden and senior Israeli officials.
Mr Netanyahu's office confirmed that the delegation, which includes the heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet internal security agency, had arrived in Doha.
For more than a year, the US has been mediating talks alongside Qatar and Egypt for a deal to end the war in Gaza and release the remaining hostages.
Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum called the latest developments "a historic opportunity to secure the release of all our loved ones".
"Leave no stone unturned and return with an agreement that ensures the return of all hostages, down to the last one," it said in a statement on Saturday.
Indirect negotiations between Israel and the Islamist militant group Hamas resumed last weekend in Qatar.
Mr Trump previously warned Hamas that there would be "hell to pay" if the hostages were not released by his inauguration on January 20.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas's attack on 7 October 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel's retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed 46,660 people, a majority of them civilians, according to Hamas-run territory's health ministry, figures the United Nations says are reliable.