US president Joe Biden spoke by phone with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday about ways to advance a potential Gaza ceasefire and hostages deal, the White House said.
The call followed US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s whirlwind trip to the Middle East that ended on Tuesday without an agreement between Israel and Hamas on a truce in the Palestinian enclave.
Mr Blinken and mediators from Egypt and Qatar have pinned their hopes on a US “bridging proposal” aimed at narrowing the gaps between the two sides in the 10-month-old Gaza war.
“President Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to discuss the ceasefire and hostage release deal and diplomatic efforts to de-escalate regional tensions,” a White House statement said.
US vice president Kamala Harris, who will on Thursday in Chicago formally accept the nomination as the Democrats’ presidential candidate for the November 5th election, also joined the call.
Mr Blinken left the Middle East on Wednesday having failed to achieve a breakthrough on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, leaving the region, once again, in a very dangerous place
US officials are now working to facilitate further talks in Cairo in the coming days but all the indications are that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is not interested in a deal at this juncture.
Mr Netanyahu told Mr Blinken he accepts American “bridging proposals” presented to the sides in an effort to narrow the gaps but Hamas officials criticised the framework as Washington adopting the Israeli position.
Mr Netanyahu met right-wing groups representing some of the families of the hostages and fallen soldiers. He told them he was not sure an agreement wouldbe reached and, in any event, Israeli troops would remain along the Philidelphi route, a narrow strip of land on the Gaza–Egypt border, and the Netzarim corridor which bifurcates the coastal enclave.
All the parties are aware that if the ceasefire talks collapse the chance of escalation between Israel and Iran and Hizbullah increases, a scenario that could plunge the entire region into a full -scale conflagration.
The situation on the northern border is already extremely tense. Hizbullah has fired some 200 rockets at Israel in the past two days, including 50 at the city of Katzrin in the occupied Golan Heights on Wednesday. Two homes were destroyed and a number of people were injured. Israel described the incident as an indiscriminate attack on civilians and vowed to respond. In recent days Israel has hit Hizbullah arms depots in the Beqaa valley, a Hizbullah stronghold deep inside Lebanon.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant wants a ceasefire and argues that the army will be able to live with a withdrawal from the Philidelphi corridor.
“The most important thing ... is to remember what the goals of the war are, to meet all the goals of the war, both regarding Hamas and also regarding the hostages, and to look north now,” he told troops stationed in the area on Wednesday, adding that the army has destroyed more than 150 tunnels along the Egypt-Gaza border and defeated the Hamas Rafah Brigade.
Palestinian sources reported that at least 50 people were killed in Israeli air strikes in Gaza in the 24 hours after Mr Blinken’s departure. Israel claimed dozens of militants were among the fatalities.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, more than 40,200 Palestinians have been killed since the war began on October 7th. Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 253 hostages seized in the surprise Hamas attack on that day – 105 hostages remain in Gaza and Israel has confirmed the death of 34 of them.
Funerals were held Wednesday for some of the six hostages whose bodies were discovered by the army in a Khan Younis tunnel on Monday night and brought back to Israel for burial. All six civilians were alive when they were seized by Palestinian gunmen on October 7th. Some relatives publicly blamed Mr Netanyahu, saying their lives could have been saved if he had prioritised a ceasefire over saving his right-wing coalition.
The Hostages Families Forum and Gaza border kibbutzim said they would boycott the state ceremonies planned to commemorate the events of October 7th. “The government should focus on the lives of the hostages in Gaza and not the lives it abandoned,” Kibbutz Be’eri said in a statement.
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2024
