U.S. Secretary Of State Blinken Seeks Gaza Ceasefire Progress In Egypt

In Egypt, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, whose country, along with the U.S. and Qatar, has been mediating the intermittent Gaza talks for several months.

The situation in Gaza remains critical, with over 40,000 people reported dead due to Israel’s military actions since October, according to Palestinian health authorities. The conflict began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and abducting about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

On Tuesday, Israel’s military said it had recovered the bodies of six hostages from southern Gaza, adding that 109 hostages remained in the Palestinian territory, of whom Israel believes around a third are already dead. In Gaza, Israeli forces battled Hamas-led militants in central and southern areas, and Palestinian health authorities reported that at least 12 people had been killed early on Tuesday in Israeli strikes, including on a school housing displaced people. Israel’s military said it had struck militants in a Hamas centre embedded in the school.

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Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Tuesday it was still waiting for polio vaccines to arrive after the disease was discovered in the territory, where most people now live in tents or shelters without proper sanitation. It echoed a call by the U.N. last week for a ceasefire to allow the vaccination campaign.

Blinken has called the latest push for a deal “probably the best, possibly the last opportunity,” and said his meeting with Netanyahu was constructive, adding it was incumbent on Hamas to accept the bridging proposal. U.S. officials have not spelled out what is in the proposal or how it differs from previous versions. “There are questions of implementation and making sure that it’s clearly understood what each side will do to carry out its commitments,” Blinken said on Monday.

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan criticized the latest developments, saying the U.S. bridging proposal that Netanyahu accepted raised ambiguities because it was different from what the group had previously agreed. Months of on-off talks have circled the same issues, with Israel saying the war can only end with the destruction of Hamas as a military and political force and Hamas saying it will only accept a permanent, not temporary, ceasefire.

There are disagreements over Israel’s continued military presence inside Gaza, particularly along the border with Egypt, the free movement of Palestinians inside the territory, and the identity and number of prisoners to be freed in a swap. Egypt is particularly focused on a security mechanism for the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow border strip between Egypt and Gaza that Israeli forces seized in May. Both Hamas and Egypt are opposed to Israel keeping troops there, but Netanyahu has said they are needed on the border to stop weapons being smuggled into Gaza. Egyptian security sources said the U.S. has proposed an international presence in the area, a suggestion the sources said could be acceptable to Cairo if it was limited to a maximum of six months.

(Includes inputs from online sources.)

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