American hostages must be freed first in any deal, say former Biden, Trump advisers

“Hamas and their backers must hear the message loud and clear,” Democrat Tom Nides and Republican Robert O’Brien wrote in an op-ed.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

All seven U.S. hostages must be freed in the first stage of any deal with Hamas, two former top American officials wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal Monday.

In a bipartisan move, President-elect Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, and President Joe Biden’s first ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, demanded “the immediate release” of both the dead and the living Americans held in the Gaza Strip.

“The U.S. has many strategic interests in the Middle East,” they wrote. “We, like the presidents we served, don’t always agree on how to serve them…. But we are united in our belief that the seven U.S. hostages still in Gaza, along with the other 93 hostages, must come home now.”

Of the dozen Americans Hamas and other terror groups kidnapped among 251 people, including some they murdered during the invasion and massacre of 1,200 in southern Israel last October 7, five were either released alive or their bodies were recovered by IDF forces.

O’Brien and Nides listed the “American Seven,” as they called them, who were left, asking that people “remember them at your holiday celebrations this week” without differentiating between the dead and living.

Three Americans of the 100 remaining in captivity — civilians Keith Siegal, 65, and Sagui Dekel-Chen, 35, and lone soldier Edan Alexander, 20 — are assumed to be alive.

Addressing “all parties” to the negotiations, O’Brien and Nide stated, “They aren’t a bargaining chip. They are our fellow citizens with names and family members who await them with unbearable pain.”

They then turned specifically to the abductors, blasting the terror organization for using the hostages as human shields and writing, “Hamas and their backers must hear the message loud and clear: Release the Americans in the first phase of the deal. All of them.”

“President Biden and his team have been working hard to make this happen. President-elect Trump has made clear that the American Seven must be released before he returns to office or there will be ‘hell to pay,’” they added.

Hamas should understand that all Americans are united on this demand and that, “for the US government, bringing home our citizens who have been unlawfully detained is a high priority rooted deep in our history,” they stated.

Monday marked the 444th day of captivity for the 100 remaining Hamas hostages, over a third of whom are dead, thereby surpassing the amount of time American embassy staffers were held in Iranian captivity after the Islamic Revolution toppled the Shah’s regime in 1979.