US Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured him in Tel Aviv on Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “confirmed to him that Israel accepts Washington’s compromise plan” for a truce in Gaza, saying that it is now “up to” Hamas “to do the same.”
Mr. Blinken met with Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders on Monday, and is scheduled to travel to Egypt on Tuesday before heading to Qatar, the two other mediating countries pushing Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to agree to a plan that includes a cease-fire and the release of hostages in Gaza after more than a decade of war.
For the upcoming talks scheduled for this week, “Prime Minister Netanyahu has promised to send his negotiating team to Doha or Egypt to try to complete this process,” Blinken added.
On his ninth trip to the region since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, triggered on October 7 by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian movement, Mr. Blinken met Mr. Netanyahu for three hours, as well as his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
“In a very constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu today, he confirmed to me that Israel accepts the compromise plan. It supports it,” Blinken said. “Now it is up to Hamas to do the same.”
Israel and Hamas have said for weeks that they support the three-phase plan proposed by US President Joe Biden in late May. But Hamas is now accusing Israel of adding “new conditions” that it believes are being imposed through “American dictates.”
“Clear understanding”
“What I would say to Hamas and its leadership is that if they really care about the Palestinian people that they claim to represent in some way, then they need to say yes to this deal and work toward a clear understanding on how to implement it,” Blinken continued.
“The only, fastest, best and most effective way to alleviate the terrible suffering of the Palestinians caused by the Hamas attack on October 7 and the war that followed is to complete this agreement,” he stressed.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data.
Of the 251 people abducted that day, 111 are still being held in Gaza, including 39 declared dead by the army.
The Israeli offensive in the besieged Gaza Strip has left at least 40,139 dead, according to Hamas’s health ministry, which did not detail the number of civilians and fighters killed.
The international community now fears a regional conflagration because Iran and its ally, Lebanese Hezbollah, say they are “obliged to retaliate” against Israel, which they blame for the assassinations in late July in Tehran of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and in Beirut of a senior Hezbollah commander, Fouad Chokr.
Following international condemnation following the announcement Thursday evening of the death of a Palestinian shot dead during an attack by Jewish settlers on his village in the north of the occupied West Bank, Mr. Blinken also said he had called on Israeli leaders to act against this violence.
“We expect to see measures, actions to prevent violence of this kind, actions to hold those responsible accountable,” Blinken said.