U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed for progress towards a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal as he visited Egypt on Tuesday, but major areas of dispute are still to be resolved in talks planned for later this week.
Blinken’s visit to the region included meetings in Israel on Monday and he is now travelling to Qatar, one of the mediators in the Gaza talks along with the United States and Egypt.Blinken said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a U.S. “bridging proposal” aimed at narrowing the gaps between the two sides after talks last week paused without a breakthrough, and urged Hamas to accept it too.
The Palestinian militant group has not explicitly rejected the proposal, but said it overturns what was previously agreed, without specifying how, and accused Israel and its U.S. ally of spinning out negotiations in bad faith.In Egypt, Blinken met President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, whose country has been helping mediate the on-off Gaza talks for months along with the U.S. and Qatar. Sisi said after the meeting that it was time to put an end to the war and warned of the conflict expanding in the region.
At stake is the fate of tiny, crowded Gaza, where Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 40,000 people since October according to Palestinian health authorities, and of the remaining hostages being held there.