Hamas backtracked on agreeing to a hostage deal when public pressure on Israel increased, according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, The New York Times reported Saturday.

An additional impediment to a deal was that Hamas wanted the conflict to spread to additional fronts, with Israel being attacked by Hezbollah and Iran, he said in an interview with the Times.

“Achieving a hostage deal was the quickest way to end the war”, he added.

The absence of world pressure on Hamas to surrender and release the hostages held in the Gaza Strip since the October 7 massacre has been “astounding,” Blinken said.

“Why there hasn’t been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender – I don’t know what the answer is to that,” he said.

“Israel, on various occasions, has offered safe passage to Hamas’s leadership and fighters out of Gaza,” he added. “Where is the world?”

Meanwhile, Hamas continues its psychological terror and publishes another video yesterday, this time of 19-year-old hostage Liri Elbag, an IDF observer. The video is three and a half minutes long and has no date. But in it, the girl says that she has been in captivity for more than 450 days, which may indicate that the filming was done recently. In the video, Liri Elbag cries and begs for her life. We are not publishing it, respecting the request of Liri Elbag’s family not to distribute these videos.

US President-Elect Donald Trump repeated his warning to Hamas to release the hostages held by Hamas and other Gazan groups for more than 450 days, speaking to reporters ahead of a New Year’s Eve party in Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.

His promise that there “would be all as hell to pay” is looks like the main reason negotiations are still alive -though optimism remains distant. As for who in the Middle East will foot the bill, and how much, we’ll likely know in just over two weeks.