And military pay in general, how do you think it is today?
Under the deal reached by the House and Senate?
The National Defense Operations Act will allow all service members to receive a 4 .5 % pay bump next year.
Junior troops, a 14 .5 % pay raise.
The caller with that number.
And that was something that really, especially the veterans of both the House and the Senate were really pushing for.
That's something they really advocated for because to the caller's point that they believe that the service members do deserve a higher pay and they do deserve a raise for kind of their service and what they've been doing.
And so that was something that was really, really important to get the negotiations, the NDA over the finish line.
Just a couple minutes left here.
What didn't we get to this week, and we got to a lot already, that you're going to be covering and watching for?
100%.
I do really think that the government funding is going to be one of the biggest...
We'll leave this program here, but you can continue watching it if you go to our website, cspan .org.
Live now to the State Department, where spokesman Matthew Miller is set to brief reporters.
...early last week as essential for delivering on the aspirations of the Syrian people after the fall of the brutal dictator Bashar al -Assad.
Those principles include that the transition process should be Syrian -led and Syrian -owned and produce an inclusive and representative government, that the rights of all Syrians, including women and minorities, should be respected,
that humanitarian aid should be able to reach people who need it.
Thank you very much.
Over the coming days, we will continue to engage with actors on the ground in Syria about the importance of adherence to those principles, as well as with our partners in the region and around the world about what they can do to advance those principles as well.
As the Secretary said on Saturday, our message to the Syrian people is this: We want them to succeed, and we are prepared to help them do so.
And with that, come here.
Secretary during the trip also talked about direct communications with HDS.
Could you say who from US government talked to who at HDS and what was the message?
What kind of feedback?
I'm not going to get into that level of detail but we have had I will say more than one communication with HDS over the past week and those communications have been largely focused around let's call two buckets of issues.
The first is the importance of locating Thank you for coming and returning.
We're good to go.
Right.
So at the moment it sounds like a number of things are being discussed.
De -listing HDS, perhaps potentially an eventual recognition.
A lot of these things are somewhat on the table, not immediately.
But I'm wondering, you did lay out your principles, but what is the first thing that you need to see from HDS for you to take a step with one of these?
And de -listing specifically because of the sanctions, it's very hard for any investment to come to Syria right now.
So a few things.
Number one, with respect to all of the potential steps that we could take, delisting HTS, removing some of the other sanctions on Syria, formal recognition, all of those we are going to take based on actions,
not by statements.
So just as a general guiding principle for all of you who are watching how the U .S. will respond, that's what we're going to base our actions on.
I'm not going to get into... trying to sequence which one of those could come first or you know which of those principles we're going to look at to be implemented first by HCS we think they're all important but we're watching what they do now and certainly inclusive in
Okay, a couple of more things.
On Austin Tice, you've been in touch with a number of groups that are on the ground in Syria.
No U .S. government delegation has been on the ground in Syria as of yet.
We have been in communication with groups on the ground in Syria, and that includes not just HTS, but other groups in Syria, including the White Helmets, of course, who do a lot of important work on locating detainees,
and other civil society groups about the search for Austin Tice.
You're able to get good information.
I can tell you that Over the past week, there have been a number of times, and I think a lot of you know about this because I get questions from you about it sometimes.
There have been leads that we have seen that we thought might lead to Austin Tice being located, and we have pursued those.
None of those leads have turned out as of yet.
I know at times you guys have found leads and reported on the possible location of Austin.
So we are getting information about what's happening inside Syria, and we are able to pursue those leads now.
Okay, a couple of final things.
Any of the information you received from the contacts on the ground in Syria, have you received anything that would reinforce your working assumption that Austin Tice is alive?
I'm just not going to get into the underlying information that we have.
This has obviously been something we have been watching for some time, right?
We've been trying to get him home for years.
And I think it's best that I not speak to kind of our underlying assessments.
As the President said, we believe he's live.
We're trying to locate him.
I don't have any new information.
Thank you very much.
Sure.
I will talk a little bit about that meeting.
I'm not going to talk about it in detail because it was a private meeting with the family.
The secretary in that meeting offered once again his deepest condolences to the family for Eisner's death.
It was a death that never should have happened, as he has said previously.
He told them that Israel has told us in recent days that they are finalizing.
We're good to go.
It's not a matter that the State Department can undertake or a matter that we can speak to.
As you know, when it comes to that type of investigation, that would be in the remit of the Justice Department.
We have an independent Justice Department for a reason inside our government, so it's ultimately something for the Justice Department to speak to.
And the State Department can't speak on behalf of an independent law enforcement agency as to what they may be doing or what they might do or might not do.
Okay.
Just final thing.
Is it your opinion?
I understand you cannot
So to answer that question, I would have to violate one of the principles that at least this administration has felt is pretty sacrosanct,
which is the independence of law enforcement investigations and other branches of the government not trying to put themselves... In the shoes and speak for or encourage action by what is,
for very good reasons, an independent law enforcement agency.
I just want to clarify something.
You just said no U .S. government organization has been on the ground in Syria since the fall of Assad.
That's strictly with respect to searching for Austin Tights, correct?
So there are not, yes, of course there is the long -standing military personnel that's been there in that counter -ISIS mission.
I wasn't speaking to that.
I'm speaking with respect to diplomatic and other personnel that might have been engaged in the search for Austin Tights or other diplomatic activities.
Just to follow up on something Humera said, and then you said, the French are sending a delegation to Damascus, to Syria.
The Brits are doing the same.
Could you just give us a reason why you would not want to at this stage, I mean, there seems obvious reasons, but I'd like to hear you say it, why you wouldn't be sending a direct delegation rather than the contacts that you've had?
Let me just say two things about that.
Number one, we have had the ability to date to be able to communicate with all of the relevant parties on the ground in Syria, including HTS.
And the second thing is I'm not ruling out that we won't send personnel to Damascus.
Why are you not ready to do so right now?
What do you mean?
Are they on the way?
Okay.
Another question related on Netanyahu on Sunday.
The Israeli government approved the doubling of the population in the Golan Heights, which of course they've annexed.
There's a lot of backlash against that from all different sides and partners.
What are the U .S. thoughts on that?
Look, our policy with respect to the Golan Heights hasn't changed.
I don't have any comment on the announcement of people moving from inside Israel to the Golan Heights.
You don't think it potentially, I mean, given the timing and all of this, that it could complicate things in terms of Syria more largely?
At this point in the stage, everyone seems to want a piece of cereal.
Everyone is involved.
These are not people who are moving to the buffer zone that is covered under the 1974 disengagement agreement.
And we have made quite clear our opinion about the buffer zone is that we believe it ought to be upheld.
Israel has said that the deployment of forces into that buffer zone is temporary.
We believe that deployment ought to be temporary and the 1974 disengagement agreement ought to be upheld.
And if you look at the statement that the United States signed on to, along with our partners in the region and a number of European countries on Saturday, it called for the upholding of We stand by Syria's territorial integrity.
We stand by that position.
So there's been a lot of optimism but do you see a deal in the offing and is it a deal that the US finds productive for moving to a post -conflict era?
So the negotiations have been productive in recent days.
We have continued to try to work with the other mediators to narrow the differences.
We have been down this road so many times before though it's hard to stand here and say we're optimistic about it because we are very much realistic about how difficult it has been to reach a deal.
There are really, and this has been true for some time, there are a very small number of differences that remain between the parties and we continue to believe that those differences can be bridged.
We continue to work to bridge those differences.
The Secretary in his meetings with President Erdogan and the Foreign Minister of Turkey last week, Hakan Fadan, emphasized to them that any influence that they have with Hamas, now is the time to use it.
And I can tell you that the Foreign Minister came back 24 hours later when he saw the Secretary in Aqaba and said that they had been pushing for a deal.
And we know of course that Egypt and Qatar, who have relationships with Hamas, have been pushing Hamas for a deal.
We are not leaving anything...
We are pushing as hard as we know how to do at this point.
And we believe we can get to a deal.
But again, it remains incumbent on Hamas and Israel agreeing to those final terms and getting it over the line.
And I can't in good conscience tell you, stand here and tell you that that's going to happen.
But it should happen.
Syria?
Matt, are you convinced that they need to expel all Russian troops as perhaps contingent to lifting sanctions as we've heard from the EU?
Russia's history inside Syria, it is one of being complicit in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians.
Russia propped up the brutal, murderous regime that gassed its own people, that murdered its own people, and so certainly I think that Russia has a lot to answer for for its actions inside Syria.
So would you consider not lifting sanctions until there is an expulsion of Russian troops?
So I'm not going to get into our internal deliberation process, but we have made clear what the factors are that we are looking at.
And they are factors that largely relate to the Syrian government's interaction with its own people, as well as things like not threatening its neighbors and not being a base for terrorism.
And then I have another on transition if you want to come back.
Yeah, I'll come back to you.
Nadia.
No, not that I'm aware of.
I haven't seen those reports, and I can't speak to the veracity.
We do not have specific information about where he is.
We continue to work to try to locate him, but we don't have specific information about his whereabouts, or we would have been able to locate him.
Okay.
The attacks that carried by Israel is almost 450.
One of the biggest attack was yesterday.
It was described like an earthquake bomb.
The leader of HDS said that he's not seeking conflict with Israel.
Do you still believe that these attacks are justified?
Look, so Israel has spoken to why they have launched these attacks.
They've said that they are concerned at a time of great instability when you have the government of Syria that has fallen and an uncertain path.
We're good to go.
And just on Gaza, another journalist, a colleague of us, has been killed yesterday.
That brings the number of journalists being killed in Gaza to 196.
How many times we can ask the same questions that journalists in Gaza needed to be protected?
And how many incidents we're still waiting for the Israelis to be investigated?
And for you to come back to us and say, So journalists in Gaza absolutely need to be protected.
When it comes to Israeli government investigations, you should ask the government of Israel that question.
We obviously engaged with them about that and pressed for answers, but you are certainly welcome to do so as well.
Those are Israeli government investigations, but we have made clear that when it comes to journalists, they need to be protected.
I will tell you, ultimately the answer to this is to get a ceasefire.
Which is why we continue to push for a ceasefire.
The journalists that are operating in Gaza are doing so with incredible heroism.
All of us in this room, including in many cases the United States government know We're good to go.
I think?
All of the diplomatic muscle that we can bring to bear to try to get one over the line.
Sure.
I mean, the reason I ask you is because the United States value press freedom and the work of these journalists on the ground, but we don't hear you condemning.
We absolutely condemn the death of any journalist.
We don't want to see any journalist hurt anywhere.
Now, when it comes to the specifics of how any one journalist dies, while we object to the killing of any journalist, oftentimes we don't know the circumstance under which they were killed, whether it is an accidental strike,
whether they were somewhere where they were covering an incident and there was a militant nearby.
It's difficult to speak to the motives behind a strike.
Okay, on the killing of civilians, there was a grandfather of a girl that was killed a year ago called Reem, two -year -old.
The grandfather was killed yesterday.
His name is Khalid Nabhan.
And he became an icon because he was very close to his granddaughter.
And he was killed as well in Nusayrat camp yesterday.
Do you still think that this is also random killing?
It was an incident that needed to be investigated?
How these civilians are dying every single day whether it's 50 or 60, it's a number that we keep repeating all the time in every briefing.
I think that there continue to be unspeakable tragedies happening in Gaza every day.
Not just the death of civilians, the maiming of civilians, the people who find it difficult to get enough to eat, the people that find it difficult to get access to medical care.
It is an ongoing tragedy.
And the answer to stopping that tragedy is to reach a ceasefire, which doesn't just require acquiescence by Israel, it requires acquiescence by Hamas.
And that is what has been so difficult to get over the past seven months.
Well, more than that.
Seven months since the president outlined the ceasefire proposal that we put on the table, but we've been pushing to get a ceasefire since long before that.
There are two parties that have to agree to a ceasefire, and I know everyone always asks me questions in this briefing room about actions by the government of Israel, but there are two parties to this conflict, and they both have to agree to this ceasefire.
And we will continue to push both parties to come to an agreement, precisely because the tragic deaths...
Thank you.
Just to follow up on the journalist.
190 journalists.
That's all accidental, you think?
I can't speak to any of those incidents without having full information.
But ultimately, Saeed, every one of those deaths is a tragedy, which is why we need to stop more deaths from happening, which is why we need to get a ceasefire.
I understand.
Okay.
Following up on the talks that you explained just a little while ago, the Israeli Ma 'arif newspaper just came out with a report that basically Egypt has reached an agreement with Hamas on some sort of a transitional committee that I'm not going to speak to that report.
I'm not aware of it, but I can tell you we have been having conversations with a number of parties in the region for some time, which you know because I've spoken to them from this podium before,
about what the post -conflict period ought to look like in Gaza, including...
Okay, because Netanyahu said today, told the court that he will not be able to attend tomorrow.
I have no idea why he's not able to attend the court hearing tomorrow.
I can't speak to that particular deployment but I would say when it comes to the use of any weapons that our expectations are the same that Israel must fully comply with international humanitarian law and protect civilian life.
Financial Times, I guess, reported that aid is at its lowest point, despite what you're saying, a lot.
Can you explain to us the aid situation now?
It continues to be extremely challenging.
We have seen some improvements.
There were a number of days last week when we saw hundreds of trucks go in, but then you have other days that the aid level is much lower.
There continue to be barriers to the delivery of aid inside Gaza that we work to try to overcome, but it continues to be really a crisis situation.
Let me ask you on the appointment of ambassadors.
The coming administration named Mark Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, and Israel named Leiter, who is a well -known Kahanist.
You mean the post -January 20th diplomatic engagement?
There's one president at a time.
One administration at a time.
We always say the same thing.
But is there anything where you can actually say...
We will not accept.
I mean, if he comes, I don't know when Leiter is coming to Washington, but maybe something that, you know, this is not a good idea.
Or issue a statement that this is not...
First of all, let me just say, with respect to other countries, they are free and open to appoint ambassadors as they see fit.
It's not a decision for the United States.
And when it comes for the policies that will be pursued by the Trump administration and the personnel appointed by the Trump administration, it's just not something that I should speak to.
I'm happy to speak to our ambassadorial appointments, but not those being made by the Trump administration.
But you do have a view.
I mean, this is...
I have a view that it is my job to stand up here and speak on behalf of the personnel that President Biden has appointed and the policies that he is going to pursue and not opine on whatever policy positions an administration that I will not speak for may choose to pursue.
If we started trying to pick and choose and opine on every ambassador that...
Tom, go ahead.
I'll come to you next.
Just some basic information for the State Department to ask the Israelis, for example, for the name of the unit involved, the name of the unit commander, things that they would want in the interest of transparency as American citizens who have seen their loved one killed.
I mean, are you asking for those things from the Israelis?
So we are asking for the results of their investigation, I would assume, but we'll see when we get the results of that investigation.
You would expect that an investigation would talk about the unit that was involved as well as the things that have happened.
We will see what's actually in that investigation when we get the report from the governor of Israel, but what we committed to the family is that we will brief them as soon as we get those answers.
Some of these things are quite basic things that aren't the result of an investigation.
Knowing the unit involved is a very basic piece of information.
They don't even know that the U .S. could ask the Israelis now.
I hear you, but look, they're in the middle of an investigation.
Well, I shouldn't say in the middle.
They're near the end of an investigation.
I think you would.
I'm looking at the...
The ministers that are being appointed to run Syria.
So maybe you ought to take a second look at that.
Maybe on silent mode.
Not for the rest of us.
To continue, do you have any sympathy with an American family who look at this situation and in their view see differential treatment?
Because here you have an American that's been killed.
Of course we have sympathy for the family.
And the Secretary said that directly to the family.
And if you heard the secretary's public comments not just what he said privately to the family, but you all heard his public comments after she was killed, when he made clear that her death was unacceptable, that it was an avoidable tragedy, that it was something that should not have happened and should not happen again, and that we will demand answers from the government of Israel, and we are demanding answers from the government of Israel now.
We also respect that when there is an ongoing investigation, it's appropriate 100.
I understand why Isenior's family is demanding answers and is demanding accountability and so are we.
We are doing it on her behalf and will continue to do so.
And I cannot in any way imagine the tragedy that they have had to go through.
And I would be every bit as angry as they are if I were in their shoes.
I guess their frustration is about, you know, of course what they see as the absolute injustice for her being killed by a military force while she's at a civilian protest.
Not just that, but about the fact that she's...
And it's just that that then goes to the wider issue,
which is, and again, Again, the attorney for the family says this, we have been here so many times before, Shireen Abu Akleh, Rachel Corrie, Omar Assad, where American citizens killed by the Israeli military and You have said the same things.
You know, you've said we'll wait for the outcome investigation.
In the case of Shireen Abu Akleh, in the end you said that you've got the Israelis to change their rules of engagement.
But here we see live ammunition used against a civilian protest in a village that has seen their land taken away by an illegal settlement outpost.
So they say this is systematic.
This is, you know, the use of live ammunition against civilians.
United Nations Special Envoy for Syria has called for ending the sanctions on Syria to facilitate reconstruction.
Is the United States prepared to support
I don't have anything to preview today with respect to any of the sanctions that we as the United States or other entities have imposed on either the government of Syria, the former Syrian regime,
or with respect to HDS as a terrorist organization.
But we have made clear the principles that we...
We want to see the transition process and a new government adhere to.
And before we make any kinds of decisions about recognition or about lifting sanctions, we want to see their actions actually adhere to those principles.
We want to see them take actions on behalf of the Syrian people.
And we're going to make our decisions when it comes to sanctions posture, when it comes to recognition posture, when it comes to all the tools in our toolbox based on what we see from HDS and other actors on the ground in Syria.
But given some of the conditions on the ground has changed in Syria, including some of the ground conditions stipulated in the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2234 has changed,
is it fair to say the US is open to lifting economic sanctions?
We are going to make our decisions on economic sanctions based on the decisions by the Interim authorities in Syria.
If they change, if they pursue...
Look, let me say it this way.
Our sanctions are never meant to be permanent.
We always impose sanctions to try to induce changes of behavior.
And if we see changes of behavior, of course we are open to lifting our sanctions.
And you've seen that in the past when various governments have changed their behavior and we have lifted sanctions in response to those changes in behavior.
That's true in Syria as it is anywhere in the world.
I have a quick one on Ukraine, if I may.
Do you have anything on what Ukraine said that North Korean soldiers casualty in Kursk?
And then what happened if North Korean soldiers cross the border to Ukraine?
Are they becoming...
So, in our view, the North Korean soldiers who were deployed to Kursk are already legitimate targets.
They entered a war and they are, as such, combatants and are legitimate targets for the Ukrainian military.
We have seen North Korean soldiers who have been killed in action on the battlefield inside Russia.
And if they were to cross the border into Ukraine, that would be yet another escalation by the government of Russia.