Blinken urges Hamas to agree Gaza truce as he meets Israel leaders

Jerusalem – AFP

Top US diplomat Antony Blinken urged Hamas to accept a truce in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to send troops into its far southern city of Rafah.

Washington has heightened pressure on all sides to reach a ceasefire — a message pushed by Blinken, who was on his seventh regional tour since Israel began its war on Gaza in October.

An Israeli official told AFP the government “will wait for answers until Wednesday night”, and then “make a decision” whether to send a delegation to indirect talks being brokered by US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators in Cairo.

Hamas said it was considering a plan for a 40-day cease-fire and the exchange of scores of Israeli prisoners for larger numbers of Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas, whose envoys returned from Cairo talks to their base in Qatar, would “discuss the ideas and the proposal”, said a Hamas source, adding: “We are keen to respond as quickly as possible.”

Blinken put the ball squarely in Hamas’s court.

“There is a very strong proposal on the table right now. Hamas needs to say yes, and needs to get this done,” he said.

But analysts questioned whether Hamas would sign up to another temporary cease-fire like the week-long truce that saw more than 100 hostages released in November, knowing that Israeli troops could resume their onslaught as soon as it was over.

“I’m pessimistic about the option of Hamas agreeing to a deal that doesn’t have a permanent cease-fire baked into it,” said Mairav Zonszein, senior analyst on Israel-Palestine at the International Crisis Group.

Zonszein said the three countries brokering the truce talks had their own reasons for trying to bounce the warring parties into a deal.

“The US and Egypt and Qatar all have very strong interests of their own, for various reasons, why they’re trying very hard now to pressure both sides into agreeing to a deal.

“And I think they believe that if they’re able to get an initial deal and a pause, that they can try to build on that,” he said.