On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk stated that the hostage release deal where Hamas has to release more hostages if they want a longer pause wasn’t the deal a few weeks ago, but Hamas agreed to the deal because they’re “under tremendous pressure.”
McGurk stated, “There’s no good faith here, obviously, when it comes to Hamas, but this was a rigorously negotiated deal. I have to say, the terms of this deal really could not have been achieved a month ago. I’ve been pretty close to this process, together with Bill Burns and so many others, Jake, across our whole team, with Tony Blinken. A month ago, the terms were very different. The way this deal is structured now is 50 women and children come out in four days, over four days of a humanitarian pause. If Hamas wants that pause to continue, it has to produce additional hostages. That was not the terms of the deal even two to three weeks ago. And that’s because Hamas is under tremendous pressure. And so, we structured this deal in a way that incentivizes the release of all hostages.”
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