UPDATED 1:42 P.M.
CAIRO (Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken blamed Hamas on Monday for holding up a ceasefire in Gaza, as the top U.S. diplomat conducted a Middle East peace mission to deliver President Joe Biden’s latest proposed plan to end the Gaza war.
Speaking after meeting Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo, Blinken said Hamas was the only side that had yet to agree to Biden’s proposal, which Washington says already had Israel’s backing before Biden announced it on May 31.
Washington says its proposal envisions a ceasefire in stages, ultimately leading to a permanent end to the war. But Israel still says it will agree only to temporary pauses until Hamas is defeated, while Hamas says it will not accept a truce without guarantees that the war will end.
“My message to governments throughout the region, to people throughout the region, is – if you want a ceasefire, press Hamas to say ‘yes’,” Blinken told reporters before leaving for Israel where he met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters Blinken’s comments were “an example of bias toward Israel and it offers American cover to the holocaust conducted by the occupation in Gaza”.
In his talks with Netanyahu on Monday evening, the U.S. State Department said Blinken had emphasised the importance of a post-war plan in Gaza as well as the need to prevent the conflict from spreading.
The war has now entered its ninth month, since Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people and took some 250 others hostage in a rampage through southern Israel. Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and reduced most of the enclave to wasteland.
Ahead of Blinken’s trip, his eighth to the region since the start of the war, Israel and Hamas both doubled down on hardline positions that have scuppered all previous attempts to end the fighting, while Israel has pressed on with assaults in central and southern Gaza, among the bloodiest of the war.
“We are committed to total victory,” Netanyahu said in a statement released by his office, quoting remarks he made on Sunday to relatives of Israelis killed in Gaza. He said he would reject a Hamas demand to “commit to stopping the war without achieving our goals of eliminating Hamas”.
Hamas and its allies Islamic Jihad said in a joint statement: “Any agreement must ensure a permanent end to the aggression and a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, reconstruction, lifting the blockade and a serious swap deal.”
ASSAULTS IN RAFAH, NUSEIRAT
In Rafah, the city on the southern edge of Gaza where Israel launched an offensive last month, residents said on Monday tanks had been thrusting deeper towards the north in the early hours of the morning. They were on the edge of Shaboura, one of the most densely populated neighborhoods at the heart of the city.
Around half of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people had been sheltering in Rafah before last month’s assault, and a million have since fled again.
Since last week, Israel has also launched a large assault in the central Gaza Strip, around the small city of Deir al-Balah, the last population centre yet to be stormed. On Monday, residents said the Israelis had pulled back from some areas there but were keeping up air strikes and shelling.
Residents in Nuseirat, north of Deir al-Balah, were still clearing debris after Israel freed four hostages in a massive raid there on Saturday. Palestinian officials say 274 people were killed, making it one of the deadliest assaults of the war. Israeli forces said they were aware of under 100 Palestinians killed there and did not know how many were combatants.
“We are exhausted and helpless, enough is enough,” said Jehad, who fled under fire from Saturday’s assault in Nuseirat with his family and was now in Deir al-Balah, speaking by text message. The family had already been displaced from Gaza City to Nuseirat, to Khan Younis, to Rafah and back to Nuseirat before their latest flight.
In video obtained by Reuters from Nuseirat, resident Anas Alyan, standing outside the ruins of his home, described how Israel commandos wearing shorts had appeared in the streets, firing wildly while F-16s and quadcopters fired from the air.
“Anyone moving in the street was killed – anyone moving, or walking, was killed immediately,” he said. “There are still children under this building. We don’t know how to pull them out,” he said, pointing to one ruin.
After months of failed peace efforts, Biden chose a new tack with his public announcement on May 31 of a ceasefire proposal. U.S. officials say Biden unveiled it without asking the Israelis first, to increase pressure for a deal.
The United Nations Security Council will vote later on Monday on a U.S.-drafted resolution backing Biden’s proposal.
Full details of the proposal have not been publicly disclosed but, as described by U.S. officials, it is similar to texts floated in previous failed peace efforts: a long truce over several stages, with gradual release of Israeli hostages ultimately leading to an end to the war.
What is different this time is that Israeli forces have now stormed most territory inside Gaza at least once, and Netanyahu is under greater domestic political pressure to reach a deal.
Benny Gantz, a popular centrist former military chief, quit Israel’s war cabinet on Sunday over what he described as the failure to outline a plan for the war’s end. That leaves Netanyahu more reliant on far-right allies who threaten to bring down his government if he agrees a deal leaving Hamas unvanquished.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Daphne Psaledakis in CairoAdditional reporting by Dan Williams in JerusalemWriting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Peter Graff and Gareth Jones; Editing by Toby Chopra, William Maclean and Ros Russell)
CAIRO (Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday, as he began a trip to the Middle East, that he was urging leaders in the region to press Hamas to say yes to a ceasefire proposal to halt fighting in Gaza.
Blinken said Hamas was the only outlier in not accepting the proposal for a three-phase deal involving the release of hostages and talks toward an end to fighting, to which he said Israel had agreed.
“My message to governments throughout the region, to people throughout the region, is if you want a ceasefire, press Hamas to say yes,” Blinken told reporters before departing Egypt to visit Israel.
A senior Hamas official told Reuters that Blinken’s Gaza ceasefire comments were “biased to Israel”.
Blinken met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo before traveling on to Israel, where he will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Blinken is on his eighth visit to the region since Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, triggering the bloodiest episode in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The top U.S. diplomat said he would also discuss plans for governance and reconstruction in post-conflict Gaza during his trip, on which he will also meet regional leaders in Jordan and Qatar.
The Hamas attack killed 1,200 people and took some 250 others hostage, according to Israeli tallies. In response, Israel launched an assault on the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said in its Sunday update, and reduced the enclave to a wasteland.
The visit comes after U.S. President Joe Biden on May 31 outlined a three-phase ceasefire proposal from Israel that envisions a permanent end to hostilities, the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and the reconstruction of Gaza.
Blinken said Egyptian officials had been in communication with Hamas as recently as a few hours ago.
There was a sense of urgency on getting an answer from Hamas on the deal, he said, but declined to further detail his talks.
Ceasefire talks have intensified since Biden’s speech and CIA director William Burns met senior officials from mediators Qatar and Egypt on Wednesday in Doha to discuss the plan.
Biden has repeatedly declared that ceasefires were close over the past several months, but there has been only one, week-long truce, in November.
Israeli forces rescued four hostages held by Hamas since October in a raid in Gaza on Saturday, during which 274 Palestinians were killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Blinken did not respond to the question of whether the raid had worsened hopes for a deal.
“Ultimately, I can’t put myself – none of us can put ourselves – in the minds of Hamas or its leaders,” Blinken said. “So we don’t know what the answer will be.”
Blinken’s trip comes after Israeli minister Benny Gantz announced his resignation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency government on Sunday, withdrawing the only centrist power in the embattled leader’s otherwise far-right coalition during the war in Gaza.
Blinken is expected to meet with Gantz on Tuesday, a senior State Department official said. They have met during previous visits by Blinken to Israel.
The departure of Gantz’s centrist party will not pose an immediate threat to the government. But it could have a serious impact nonetheless, leaving Netanyahu reliant on hardliners, with no end in sight to the war and a possible escalation in fighting with Lebanese Hezbollah.
(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis in Cairo and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; additional reporting by Simon Lewis; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Lincoln Feast, Chizu Nomiyama and Toby Chopra)
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