US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that he had discussed the importance of achieving a hostage-ceasefire deal between Israel and the Hamas terror group in meetings with Turkey’s president and foreign minister, and expressed some optimism about the prospects.

“We’ve seen in the last couple of weeks more encouraging signs that [a deal] is possible,” Blinken said in Ankara, on his twelfth trip to the Middle East since war broke out last October, when Hamas attacked Israel.

The American diplomat’s comments came the morning after a report that Hamas had eased some of its demands and provided Israel with a list of hostages to be released in the first phase of an agreement. They also came as US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was in the midst of yet another Mideast trip to push for a deal.

Sullivan, who is also set to travel to key mediator countries Egypt and Qatar during this trip, yesterday denied assertions that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was stalling to try to reach a deal after US President-elect Donald Trump enters office on January 20. Sullivan said his goal was to be able to close a deal by the end of December.

The US president-elect has said repeatedly that he wants the war in Gaza to end by the time he returns to the White House, and threatened that there will be “hell to pay” for anyone in the region who is still holding hostages when he is inaugurated.