Blinken says Gaza ceasefire talks ‘may be last opportunity’ for hostage deal
Antony Blinken has described the current talks as the “last opportunity” to free Israeli detainees and for the sake of halting fighting in Gaza during his trip to Israel.
During an interview in Tel Aviv on Monday after a briefing with Netanyahu, Blinken said Netanyahu, who has been very adamant about getting rid of Hamas’s refusal to call off the war without destroying the group, has accepted the ‘bridge-building plan’ provided by the U. S.
“As recently as in the past week, the US president put forward an offer together with Qatar and Egypt to bridge the gaps between the parties and complete what the president had put in place months ago,” Blinken said to the press.
“During a very productive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu today he assured to me that Israel favour the bridging proposal. Hence the ball is in the court of Hamas. ”
Hamas has, nevertheless, insisted that any truce must be one that definitively puts an end to the war in Gaza and entails the pullout of Israeli troops. A news report over the weekend from Axios suggested that Hamas interprets the US plan as letting the Israeli army govern the so-called Netzarim Corridor that splits Gaza between the north and the south and the Rafah Crossing and the Philadelphi Corridor along the border with Egypt.
Blinken did not respond to these particular questions directly but stressed that the US is working with the Israeli authorities in dealing with the polio crisis in Gaza, a problem to which healthcare stakeholders have linked to the state of affairs brought by the Israeli military campaign.
Israel rejected key elements of a previous agreement, and Hamas said that we made the change meant to give the impression that Hamas, not Netanyahu, is unwilling to accept the deal.
After Blinken’s comments on Monday, Hamas spokesperson Osama Hamdan said: “We will only agree to implement Biden’s proposal, which we accepted a few months ago. ” “The new agreement which Netanyahu accepted implies that the US administration has not succeeded in persuading Netanyahu to gulp the previous deal.
While the US claims that it is seeking a practicable cessation of hostilities, it provides Israel with massive consignments of arms even as Israeli forces in Gaza are alleged to have committed systematic human rights abuses. Blinken still did not expound on which aspects of the proposal that Netanyahu has said he agrees with have been modified to warrant acceptance after turning down.
Indeed, as Marwan Bishara, the senior political analyst of Al Jazeera, noted after the press conference with Blinken, the last thing the US diplomat said was that Netanyahu agreed on the bridging proposals. However, he did not specify what kind of proposals these are. “Are these proposals new ones that Biden made to Netanyahu, or are they the ones presented to the [United Nations] Security Council back in late May and changed by Netanyahu?”
Blinken underscored the situation’s urgency earlier on Monday during a meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
“This is our last chance – it may well be the final chance – to bring home the kidnap victims, end the fighting and begin the process of building the future that people in this region deserve,” he said on his ninth visit to the region since the start of Israel’s war with Gaza in late October.
This is the final stage of a very high-powered diplomatic push ordered by President Biden, Blinken said more. ”It is high time that people started giving their consent rather than looking for excuse to deny. ”
The US and other Western countries have pressed Iran and its allies not to hit back at Israel after the recent assassinations of key Hamas and Hezbollah operatives.
Concerns that the fighting may intensify have risen since, in the last month, two of the organisation’s most important officials and fighters were killed – Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Fuad Shukr in Beirut – both affiliated with Hezbollah. Blinken said that the US aims to avoid the escalation of violence and ask all the conflicting parties to act in a way that will not sabotage the peace-making process.
Herzog, who has mostly protocol responsibilities, stressed the need to release the captives detained in Gaza since October 7. “If there is any humanitarian cause, and indeed there is no greater humanitarian cause, than the return of our hostages,” Herzog said to Blinken.
Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas are brokered with the help of Egypt and Qatar, and the latest mediator, the US, said negotiations in Qatar concluded on Friday and did not yield any outcome. Further negotiations are to begin this week in Cairo.
Hamas, to date, has called for a permanent cessation of the war permanently, while Israel has stated that no deal should ever be such that should hinder it from waging war, despite repeated calls by the US for the conflict to come to an end.
In Gaza, Israel’s onslaught continues while the army estimates deaths from the shelling at 4,000, and Palestinian health organisations speak of over forty thousand.
