SECRETARY BLINKEN: Good evening, everyone. We had a good day in Egypt and now in Qatar. I had a chance in Egypt, as you know, to see President Sisi, Foreign Minister Abdelatty, the Intelligence Chief Abbas Kamel, and here in Qatar I was just on the phone with the prime minister who is traveling to Australia but saw the Minister of State Al-Khulaifi. And with our partners in Egypt and Qatar, our message is simple, it's clear, and it's urgent: We need to get the ceasefire and hostage agreement over the finish line, and we need to do it now.
Time is of the essence. Time is of the essence because with every passing day the well-being and lives of the hostages are in jeopardy. Time is of the essence because every single day women, children, men in Gaza are suffering without access to adequate food, medicine, and at risk of being wounded or dying in fighting that they didn't start and they cannot stop. And time is of the essence because with every passing day there's the danger of escalation in the region - escalation that we've been working to prevent from day one since October 7th.
With Egypt and with Qatar we're united in purpose and united in action. We're working in our different ways to try to ensure that there is not escalation, sending the necessary messages to all of the potential actors, including Iran, including Hizballah, to avoid taking any steps that could escalate the conflict or spread it. We're united in our work with the parties to try to bring this agreement across the finish line. And Qatar and Egypt in particular are in direct contact with Hamas, working to bring it along as we work to conclude this agreement.
Now, as I think everyone remembers, President Biden put out a detailed plan for a ceasefire and the release of hostages in May. The entire world endorsed it. The UN Security Council endorsed it. And since then we've been working to bring the parties along. A lot of work went into that, and we got to the point where, as we were working on implementing that plan, it was necessary hearing from both the parties to provide some clarifications, to provide some additional detail, and that's exactly what went into the bridging proposal that our three countries put forward just a little over a week ago.
Israel has now accepted that proposal - I heard that directly from Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday - and we hope and expect that Hamas will do the same. That's the critical next step, but once that happens we also have to complete the detailed implementation agreements that go along with putting the ceasefire into effect. And there it's very important that everyone do what's necessary to bring the flexibility to the table to make sure that we can the get implementation agreed and that the parties to the ceasefire can make good on the commitments that they've made in the agreement.
So that's a process that's ongoing at the same time. We're engaged every single day with Israel, and our Qatari and Egyptian partners are engaged with Hamas, and over the coming days we are going to do everything possible to, one, get Hamas on board with the bridging proposal, and then to make sure that both parties work on and agree to necessary details of implementation that would allow everything to go forward. So what's where we are. And I'd just return to what I started with, which is a strong sense, a strong commitment on the part of the United States, Egypt, Qatar, and for that matter many other countries, on the fierce urgency of now. This needs to get done and it needs to get done in the days ahead, and we will do everything possible to get it across the finish line.
