A White House statement says Biden is not giving up on the Gaza ceasefire and prisoners

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday that U.S. President Joe Biden is motivated to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza and a hostage deal with Hamas. He also wants to ease tensions on Israel’s border with Lebanon.

In an interview with MSNBC hours before Biden gave his last speech as president to the UN General Assembly, Sullivan said, “He hasn’t given up at all.”

Sullivan said that Biden will meet with world leaders in New York to work on a peace and hostage deal in Gaza so that there isn’t a full-on war in the Middle East.

He said that it would be hard to get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas head Yahya Sinwar to agree, and that Sinwar and Netanyahu in particular “don’t want to do a deal.”

Sullivan said, “But we’re going to keep at it.”

The US has tried to keep things calm in the area since Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, which led to Israeli response on the coastal strip that lasted almost a year.

He said that the war with Hezbollah along Israel’s northern border has been getting worse on and off since October 7 and is getting worse now.

“But we have averted it in those previous spikes, and I believe that we can still find a path forward to get de-escalation between Israel and across that northern border between Israel and Lebanon and bring about a diplomatic solution that allows people to return to their home,” said Sullivan.