The US secretary of state Antony Blinken headed to Israel seeking a Gaza ceasefire deal that could help avert a wider war, while a senior Hamas official dismissed “American diktats” in negotiations. Picture: AFP
Top US diplomat Antony Blinken headed to Israel on Sunday seeking a Gaza ceasefire deal that could help avert a wider war, while a senior Hamas official dismissed “American diktats” in negotiations.
Making his ninth trip to the Middle East since the Gaza war began with Palestinian militants’ October 7 attack, the secretary of state is due to meet Israeli leaders before truce talks resume in Cairo.
The US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have said negotiations to clinch a ceasefire in the more than 10-month-old war were making progress, and US President Joe Biden said “we are closer than we have ever been”.
But Hamas political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri undercut the cautious optimism, saying that signs of progress after two days of talks in Doha were “an illusion”.
“We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats,” he said.
Previous optimism during months of on-off truce talks has proven unfounded. However, the stakes have risen since the killings in quick succession last month of Iran-backed militant leaders, including Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, and as the humanitarian crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip has deepened with a feared polio outbreak.
After mediators announced they had put forward a “bridging proposal” to close remaining gaps between the warring sides, Hamas said it rejected “new conditions” from Israel and called for a plan outlined by Biden in late May to be implemented.
Talks are due to resume in the Egyptian capital in the coming days.
Before Blinken departed on Saturday night for Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office called for “heavy pressure” on Hamas to reach a breakthrough.
The Palestinian group, as well as some analysts and Israeli protesters, have accused Netanyahu of hamstringing a deal to safeguard his hard-right ruling coalition.
At a rally in the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Saturday, 51-year-old Guri Lotto said he was protesting to “put pressure on the government, and hopefully the international community will also help put pressure” to secure a hostage release deal and end the war.
As efforts towards a long-sought truce continued, so has the violence in Gaza, but also in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hamas ally Hezbollah have traded near-daily fire throughout the war.
The civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike on Saturday killed 15 people from a single Palestinian family in Al-Zawaida, in central Gaza, where the Israeli military said its forces had targeted rocket launchers.
The deaths in Al-Zawaida pushed the Gaza health ministry’s war death toll to 400074.
In Lebanon, the authorities said an Israeli air strike on Saturday in Nabatieh killed 10 Syrians, one of the deadliest attacks on south Lebanon since October. Israel said it targeted a Hezbollah weapons storage facility.
In the West Bank, Israel said it had killed “two senior Hamas officials” in Jenin. Hamas’s armed wing confirmed the deaths of militants Ahmad Abu Ara and Raafat Dawasi.
Iran and its regional allies have vowed retaliation for Haniyeh’s death in Tehran, an attack which Israel has not claimed responsibility for, and for an Israeli strike in Beirut that killed a top Hezbollah commander.
Western and Arab diplomats have been shuttling around the region to push for a Gaza deal, which they see as the best way to avert a wider conflagration following the high-profile killings.
In Israel, Blinken will seek to “conclude the agreement for a ceasefire and release of hostages and detainees”, the US State Department said.
The proposed deal, which Biden outlined on May 31 but attributed to Israel, would freeze fighting for an initial six weeks and lead to the release of hostages and prisoners.
Out of 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 7 attack, 111 are still held in Gaza including 39 the military says are dead. More than 100 were freed during a one-week truce in November.
Cape Times
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