US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Tel Aviv to ratchet up the pressure to achieve a cease-fire deal in Gaza and return hostages held by the Palestinian group Hamas to Israel.
During his ninth trip since the conflict began, Blinken will meet Monday with senior Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a senior State Department official said. He will then travel to Egypt where truce talks will resume in the coming days.
A US official traveling with Blinken told AFP news agency on condition of anonymity that “the feeling is… that various sticking points that existed before are bridgeable, and that work’s going to continue.”
The mediating countries — Qatar, the United States and Egypt — have so far failed to reach a deal in months of on-off negotiations.
Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting Sunday 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.
Hamas has cast doubt on whether an agreement is near, saying the latest proposal diverged significantly from a previous iteration it had accepted in principle.
Israel’s demands for a lasting military presence along the Gaza-Egypt border is one of the issues Hamas has rejected.
Hamas on Sunday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “obstructing” a possible cease-fire and hostage exchange in Gaza by setting new conditions.
The Palestinian group, which is designated a terrorist organization by the EU, the United States and Israel, among others, said Netanyahu was “fully responsible for thwarting the efforts of the mediators, obstructing an agreement, and (bears) full responsibility for the lives” of hostages in Gaza.
Israeli officials, and mediators the United States, Egypt and Qatar, held fresh talks in Doha in the past few days.
But Hamas, which was not represented in Doha, said the new proposal were too close to Netanyahu’s recent positions.
Earlier the Israeli prime minister accused Hamas of being “obstinate” and called for more pressure on them to bring about a cease-fire deal.
Source: DW News
