The Biden administration will watch the implementation of the deal made between Israel and Hamas, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Wednesday.
“Nobody's doing touchdown dances here. Now's the time for everybody to watch very, very closely. Because this is this is going to come down now to implementation and execution,” Kirby said in a virtual briefing for the American Jewish community.
Kirby said that the administration will be watching “very closely” to make sure that Hamas holds up their end of the hostage deal.
Kirby also offered some explanation into the remaining American hostages, explaining that there are 10 unaccounted-for Americans, and they are all believed to be held captive at this time.
“We know there’s 10 unaccounted-for Americans — we don’t know that all of them are hostages but that’s the assumption that we’re making. So somewhere in that neighborhood,” he said.
Three Americans would fall into the women and children category that is part of the release deal, and the US is optimistic the three “will be in at least one of the increments.”
But he continued to express some caution: “We’ll have to watch — the truth is we won’t know for sure until we start to see people moving.”
Pressed by CNN’s Bianna Golodryga on whether there is proof all of the hostages are still alive, Kirby hedged.
“Our information is limited about all the hostages, including the remaining American hostages. So I can’t tell you definitively that we have proof of life on all of them. But I can say that we have no indication to the contrary. So we’re going to continue to work on this as hard as we can,” he said.