Asked about a report earlier this week which alleged that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently sabotaged efforts to reach a hostage release-ceasefire deal, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby says that Hamas is the primary reason that a deal remains elusive.

He says that he hasn’t seen the report, published by Israel’s Channel 12 television network, and therefore cannot comment on it, but that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar “remains the main obstacle to pushing this forward.”

Responding to a Wall Street Journal report which alleged that a hostage-ceasefire deal was unlikely before the end of US President Joe Biden’s term in January, Kirby acknowledges that mediators are “no closer to achieving that than we were even a week or so ago” but vows that “ain’t nobody giving up.”

“We’re still going to keep the shoulders to the wheel,” he says. “We’re still going to keep trying on this. The president has directed his team to continue to try to find a way to see if we can get a proposal that both sides will agree to.”