US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that Israel has accepted a proposal to bridge differences holding up a cease-fire and hostage release in Gaza, and he called on Hamas to do the same, without saying whether the latest draft had addressed concerns cited by the militant group.
The high-stakes negotiations have gained speed in recent days as diplomats hope an agreement will deter Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah from avenging the targeted killings of two top militants that were blamed on Israel. The escalating tensions have raised fears of an even more destructive regional war.
Blinken spoke after holding a 2 1/2 hour meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the day, and will travel to Egypt and Qatar for further negotiations. The three mediators have spent months trying to end the war in Gaza, with the talks repeatedly stalling.
“In a very constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu today, he confirmed to me that Israel supports the bridging proposal,” Blinken told reporters, without saying what the proposal entails. “The next important step is for Hamas to say yes.'” He added, however, that even if Hamas accepts the proposal, negotiators will spend the coming days working on “clear understandings on implementing the agreement”.
He said there are still “complex issues” requiring “hard decisions by the leaders”, without offering specifics.
He did not say whether the proposal addressed Israel's demands for control over two strategic corridors inside Gaza, which Hamas has said is a nonstarter, or other issues that have long bedeviled the negotiations.
Hamas has said it is losing faith in the US as a mediator, accusing American negotiators of siding with Israel as it makes new demands that the militant group rejects.
Netanyahu said that he had a “good and important meeting” with Blinken and appreciated the “understanding that the United States has shown to our vital security interests, along with our shared efforts to release our hostages”.
He added that efforts are being made to release the maximum number of hostages in the first stage of a the cease-fire deal.
Blinken's ninth mission to the Middle East since the conflict began came days after mediators, including the United States, expressed renewed optimism that a deal was near. But Hamas has expressed deep dissatisfaction with the latest proposal, and Israel has said there were points on which it was unwilling to compromise.
“This is a decisive moment, probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a cease-fire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security,” Blinken said as he opened talks with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Tel Aviv earlier Monday.
“It's also time to make sure that no one takes any steps that could derail this process,” he said in a veiled reference to Iran. “And so we're working to make sure that there is no escalation, that there are no provocations, that there are no actions that in any way move us away from getting this deal over the line, or for that matter, escalating the conflict to other places and to greater intensity.” Mediators will meet again this week to try to cement a cease-fire. Blinken will travel on Tuesday to Egypt and Qatar, where Hamas maintains a political office.
The war began on October 7 when Hamas-led militants broke into Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others. Of those, about 110 are still believed to be in Gaza, though Israeli authorities say around a third are dead. More than 100 hostages were released in November during a weeklong cease-fire.
Israel's counterattack in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and devastated much of the territory.
Late last week, the three countries mediating the proposed cease-fire — Egypt, Qatar and the US — reported progress on a deal under which Israel would halt most military operations in Gaza and release a number of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of hostages.
Shortly before Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Sunday, Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting there are areas where Israel can be flexible and unspecified areas where it won't be.
“We are conducting negotiations and not a scenario in which we just give and give,” he said.
The evolving proposal calls for a three-phase process in which Hamas would release all hostages abducted during its October 7 attack. In exchange, Israel would withdraw its forces from Gaza and release Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas accuses Israel of adding new demands that it maintain a military presence along the Gaza-Egypt border to prevent arms smuggling and along a line bisecting the territory so it can search Palestinians returning to their homes in the north. Israel said those weren't new demands, but clarifications of a previous proposal.
Late Sunday, Hamas said in a statement that Netanyahu has continued to set obstacles to a deal by demanding new conditions, accusing him of wanting to prolong the war. It said the mediators' latest offer was a capitulation to Israel.
“The new proposal responds to Netanyahu's conditions,” Hamas said.
An Israeli delegation held talks with Egyptian officials as part of the truce efforts, an Egyptian official said on Monday.
The hourslong meeting on Sunday focused on the Philadelphi corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, but didn't achieve a breakthrough, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing negotiations.
Blinken said there's a “fierce urgency of now” rooted in the hope of averting an even worse regional conflagration.
“The challenges, the longer this goes on, the more, again, the hostages will suffer and possibly perish, and the more other things happen that could make things impossible.”
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