Top American diplomat aims to finalize terms at a summit later this week; won’t specify how PM’s demand for continued IDF presence on Gaza-Egypt border is handled in bridging offer
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday put pressure on Hamas to back the latest US proposal for a hostage deal, as Washington stepped up its efforts to reach an agreement that could end the war in Gaza.
Speaking to the press in Tel Aviv after sitting with Israel’s political and military leadership, Blinken said he had a “very constructive meeting” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the day. At the end of that meeting, Netanyahu issued a statement backing the new US proposal.
Blinken stressed that the premier “confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal” offered by the US last week in Doha “to try to bridge the gaps that remain between the parties.”
“It’s now incumbent on Hamas to do the same,” the secretary said.
“The next important step is for Hamas to say yes,” repeated Blinken, “and then, in the coming days, for all of the expert negotiators to work on clear understandings on implementing the agreement.”
Responding late Monday night, however, Hamas official Osama Hamdan told Reuters that Blinken’s comments regarding Netanyahu’s acceptance of an updated US proposal “raises many ambiguities” because it’s “not what was presented to us, nor what we agreed on.”
Hamdan said Hamas, which set out its own terms in a July 2 proposal, has already told the mediators that “we don’t need new Gaza ceasefire negotiations; we need to agree on an implementation mechanism.” Hamas’s July 2 proposal, which Netanyahu dismissed, was itself a response to an Israeli proposal made public by US President Joe Biden in late May.
Netanyahu informed Blinken in their three-hour meeting that he would send his top negotiators to a likely summit in Cairo this week, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel.
The team will be led by Mossad chief David Barnea, Shin Bet director Ronen Bar and IDF hostage pointman Nitzan Alon.
All three took part in the talks last Thursday-Friday in the Qatari capital Doha, at the end of which the US presented its bridging proposal to Israel and conveyed it to Hamas, which did not directly participate in the summit.
Asked whether Netanyahu has definitively accepted a ceasefire as part of the deal, or whether he fears the prime minister may make new demands, Blinken told the press conference that the bridging proposal reflects the ceasefire agreement “that President Biden put before the world back in May, that’s incorporated into a UN Security Council resolution, and that makes clear that this process will proceed in phases: The first initial ceasefire over the course of six weeks, in which hostages are released, prisoners are exchanged, and negotiations commence on the conditions necessary for an enduring ceasefire. That’s what the deal says.”
The bridging proposal, he elaborated, “was to try to close some gaps or to clarify different parts of this agreement that needed clarification.”
One of the major gaps the US, Egypt and Qatar are trying to address concerns the deployment of IDF troops along the Philadelphi corridor on the Egypt-Gaza border in the event of a deal. Netanyahu has insisted on maintaining an IDF presence there — a demand Hamas rejects.
An Israeli official familiar with the meeting between Netanyahu and Blinken told The Times of Israel that “the Americans did not reject Israel’s strategic logic.”
The official stressed that Israel cannot leave the Philadelphi Route completely because “we cannot be sure that we can go back” if and when needed, because of international pressure.
The US accepts Israel’s approach to the Philadelphi Route, said the official, and efforts will continue this week to find a solution that protects Israel’s security interests.
Asked directly about Netanyahu’s position on the Philadelphi issue, and how it is handled in the bridging proposal, Blinken told reporters that he “can’t comment on specific issues that remain.”
Netanyahu has been demanding that any hostage-truce deal provide for an ongoing IDF presence along the Egypt-Gaza border and include a mechanism to prevent a return of armed Hamas gunmen to northern Gaza. He has also insisted that Israel retain the right to resume the battle against Hamas in order to achieve all the war’s declared aims — the release of all hostages, the destruction of Hamas, and the prevention of Gaza posing a future terrorist threat to Israel. It is not clear how the US bridging proposal, which has not been published, seeks to resolve these issues.
Channel 12 news reported on Monday evening that the US proposal provides for “some kind” of ongoing Israeli presence on the Philadelphi Corridor. However, it added, Israel’s negotiators told Netanyahu in a meeting on Sunday that this is not acceptable to Hamas and that there will be no deal if he insists upon it. Netanyahu, in response, is said to have told them that there will indeed be no deal if Hamas does not relinquish its demand for a full IDF withdrawal from the border area.
The Axios website reported late Monday that when Israeli, Egyptian and US officials met in Cairo on Sunday and Monday to discuss the Philadelphi corridor, the Israeli negotiators, on Netanyahu’s orders, presented “a map that showed Israel reducing some of its forces but still deploying them all along the corridor.” The Egyptians, the report said, rejected that plan.
Asked whether he had heard directly from Hamas on the US proposal, which Hamas officials have said they reject, Blinken said, “Obviously, we don’t hear directly from Hamas, but both Egypt and Qatar are in contact with Hamas.” He said the leaders of Egypt and Qatar would update him on what they were hearing on Tuesday. “I can’t speculate on exactly what Hamas’s intentions are. We’ve seen public statements [from Hamas officials rejecting the proposal], but we’ve seen public statements before that don’t fully reflect where Hamas is.”
A few dozen protesters gathered outside the hotel in Tel Aviv where Blinken was staying on Monday evening, demanding he compel Netanyahu to agree to a hostage deal.
Inside, meeting with the families of Hamas-held hostages who hold US citizenship, Blinken said the US is convinced that Netanyahu is truly committed to reaching a deal this time, Channel 12 reported. He gave them a sense that a deal can be finalized within days, the report said
“And what if he’s bluffing again?” one of the participants reportedly asked Blinken.
He is said to have laughed and said, “We’ll know. We have a way to measure if the prime minister is committed to a deal. And this time our assessment is that he is.”
He also reportedly told them that there is immense pressure on Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar to agree to the bridging proposal — including from the Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
After his talks with Blinken, Netanyahu put out a video statement saying that the two had “a very good and important meeting.”
Netanyahu said he appreciated “the understanding the US showed toward our vital security interests, amid our joint efforts to bring about the releases of our hostages.”
“I want to emphasize efforts to release the maximum number of living hostages — in the first stage of the deal,” the prime minister added.
Blinken also met with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi in Tel Aviv on Monday.
According to Gallant’s office, the minister told Blinken that “Israel’s defense establishment is committed to continue operating in Gaza until the goals of the war are achieved — the return of the hostages and dismantling Hamas.”
“The minister emphasized the importance of ongoing military pressure placed by Israel on Hamas, alongside the need for ongoing US political pressure on Hamas, until a framework is achieved that will enable the return of hostages to Israel,” said the Israeli readout.
During his meeting with Blinken on Monday morning, President Isaac Herzog put the blame squarely on Hamas for the failure to reach a hostage deal.
“People have to understand it starts with a refusal of Hamas to move forward,” said Herzog.
Speaking after Herzog, Blinken called it “a decisive moment, probably the best, maybe the last opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire, and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security.”
However, he did not place the blame on Hamas, as he did later in the day: “It’s time for it to get done. It’s also time to make sure that no one takes any steps that could derail this process. So we’re looking to make sure that there is no escalation, that there are no provocations, that there are no actions that in any way could move us away from getting this deal over the line, or for that matter, escalating the conflict to other places and to greater intensity.”
Blinken is slated to fly to Egypt and Qatar on Tuesday as he pushes for a summit later this week to try to seal an agreement.
“There is a deep sense of urgency for getting this done,” Blinken said at his press conference, adding that a hostage-ceasefire deal is “the best way to make sure the conflict doesn’t spread, that we don’t see escalation, that we can actually defuse some of the pressure points that we see throughout the region, and then open prospects for trying to build more enduring peace and security for everyone throughout the Middle East.”
Blinken also said the US has deployed additional assets to the region recently “not to provoke aggression but rather to deter it, to make sure that it doesn’t happen,” and “also to make clear that if it does, we are fully prepared to defend Israel.”
As reported by The Times of Israel