US president says administration ‘pushing hard’ to avoid Israel-Hezbollah conflict from spreading across region; White House blames Sinwar for holding up hostage-ceasefire deal US President Joe Biden told querying journalists Sunday that he was worried about rising tensions in the Middle East and that his administration was working to prevent them from boiling over into a regional conflict.

Biden was quizzed about his position as fighting between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group heated up after 11 months of simmering deadly conflict across the border, alongside open war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“We’re going to do everything we can to keep a wider war from breaking out. And we’re still pushing hard,” he told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House.

Hezbollah says it is attacking in support of Gaza, where Palestinian terror group Hamas prompted an ongoing war by leading a massive October 7 attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

Qatar, Egypt, and the United States have for months tried to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, although the sides remain far apart on key issues. Biden administration officials in the past few days sent the draft text of a new proposal to Israel and, via Qatari and Egyptian mediators, to Hamas, Channel 12 news reported Sunday, citing an Israeli and an American source.

Israel has expressed reservations, including over clauses relating to the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border and the Netzarim Corridor that divides between northern and southern Gaza, the report said.

Hamas, however, flatly rejected the draft text and said it would not accept any deal that differs from a previous proposal presented by Biden at the end of May. Biden’s May presentation was, in fact, based on an Israeli proposal, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed that, in its response, Hamas sought to make 29 changes. For his part, Netanyahu has in recent months repeatedly invoked a series of nonnegotiable conditions for a deal that are not specified in the May proposal. Those included retaining control of the Philadelphi Corridor to prevent Hamas from smuggling in weapons from Egypt.

Channel 12’s report suggested that Hamas’s firmly negative response to the latest US ideas may have been tied to White House National Security spokesman John Kirby’s comments earlier Sunday blaming Hamas for talks stalling.

“It doesn’t appear that Mr. Sinwar is prepared at all to keep negotiating in good faith, especially after he murdered six hostages in a tunnel, execution style,” Kirby said on ABC’s “This Week.” He also called for a diplomatic solution amid heightening cross-border tensions between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror group.

“It doesn’t appear as if he’s willing to move this forward,” Kirby said.

The IDF recovered the bodies of six hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 from a tunnel in southern Gaza’s Rafah at the beginning of the month, just days after they were murdered by their captors.

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