Biden celebrates cease-fire in Gaza

Outgoing President Joe Biden in brief remarks Sunday celebrated the release of three Israeli hostages in Gaza and promoted his approach to the conflict as a six-week cease-fire takes hold.

"After so much pain, destruction and loss of life, today the guns in Gaza have gone silent," Biden said.

Biden used the speech to defend his continued support of Israel throughout its 15-month campaign against Hamas in Gaza. The president faced criticism from some in his own party for continuing to send arms to Israel even as it blocked the flow of life-saving aid to Gaza and expanded its war efforts in the region. More than 64,000 people in Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the country, according to a study published January in The Lancet, though Palestinian health authorities recently placed the figure at more than 46,600.

"I concluded abandoning the course I was on would not have led us to the cease-fire we're seeing today," Biden said.

"But instead it would have risked the wider war in the region that so many feared. Now the region has been fundamentally transformed. Hamas's longtime leader, [Yahya] Sinwar, is dead. Hamas' sponsors in the Middle East have been badly weakened by Israel, backed by the United States."

Along with France, the White House in November, 2024, successfully shepherded a ceasefire between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, putting to an end more than a year of fighting. In November 2023, there was also a short ceasefire in Gaza in which some of the hostages taken during Hamas' Oct. 7 incursion into Israel were released.

Thirty-three Israeli hostages are set to be released in the initial six-week pause in hostilities, along with hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. And negotiations on the cease-fire's next phase will take place in the coming weeks.

That, Biden said, is the Trump administration's job.

"It now falls to the next administration to help implement this deal," Biden cautioned. "I was pleased to have our teams speak as one voice in the final days. It was both necessary and effective and unprecedented. But success is going to require persistence. And continuing support for our friends in the region, and the belief in diplomacy backed by deterrence."