US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday appealed to Hamas to urgently accept a ceasefire plan to ease suffering in Gaza, but also entered a public spat with Israel as he capped a new round of shuttle diplomacy.
Blinken closed his ninth wartime trip to the region in which he said that the US-backed truce proposal might be the “last chance” to broker an end the conflict.
“Time is of the essence,” Blinken said after stops in key Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, as well as Israel.
Photo: AFP
“With every passing day, more bad things can happen to more good people who don’t deserve it,” he told reporters before flying out of Doha.
“This needs to get done, and it needs to get done in the days ahead, and we will do everything possible to get it across the finish line,” he said of the truce proposal.
The US last week presented ideas to bridge gaps and, through Qatar and Egypt, has pressed heavily on Hamas to accept and return to talks this week in Cairo.
However, a day after Blinken said that US ally Israel was on board, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted by Israeli media as disagreeing on a key sticking point.
Netanyahu insisted that Israel maintain control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the border between Gaza and Egypt that Israeli troops seized from Hamas, who rely on secret tunnels to bring in weapons.
Blinken said that Israel had already agreed on the “schedule and location” of troop withdrawals from Gaza.
From the start of the conflict, it was made “very clear that the United States does not accept any long-term occupation of Gaza by Israel,” Blinken said when asked about Netanyahu’s remarks.
A senior US official accompanying Blinken, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were discussing sensitive diplomacy, was more blunt, saying that such “maximalist statements” by Netanyahu “are not constructive” in reaching a truce.
Blinken said that differences remained, and called for Israel and Hamas to show “maximum flexibility” in their positions.
Egypt, the first Arab nation to make peace with Israel, has been infuriated by the border takeover. Blinken has hoped to entice Netanyahu to compromise by offering the prospect of Israel achieving greater normalization with the Arab world, including the ultimate prize of Saudi Arabia, guardian of Islam’s two holiest sites.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, meeting Blinken at his Mediterranean summer palace in El Alamein, told him that “the time has come to end the ongoing war,” an official Egyptian statement said.
Blinken then traveled to Doha to meet with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, but a US official said the Qatari ruler was feeling unwell and the two would instead talk on the telephone soon.
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