By Humeyra Pamuk
ALAMEIN, Egypt (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Egypt on Tuesday, pushing for areas of possible progress on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal in talks planned for later this week, with major areas of dispute left unresolved.
Blinken arrived in Egypt from Tel Aviv, where he said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a U.S. “bridging proposal” aimed at narrowing the gaps between the two sides after talks last week paused without a breakthrough. He urged Hamas to also accept the proposal as the basis for more talks.
The Palestinian militant group has not definitively rejected the proposal, but has said it backtracks from areas previously agreed and has accused Israel and its U.S. ally of spinning out the negotiations process in bad faith.
In Egypt, Blinken was meeting President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, whose country has been helping mediate the on-off Gaza talks for months along with the U.S. and Qatar.
At stake is the fate of tiny, crowded Gaza, where Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 40,000 people since October according to Palestinian health authorities, and of the remaining hostages being held there.
The war in Gaza began on Oct. 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 around a third are believed already to be dead.
In Gaza, Israeli forces battled Hamas-led militants in central and southern areas, and Palestinian health authorities said 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.
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.
PROPOSAL
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 criticised 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.
(This story has been refiled to fix the order of words in the headline)
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Alamein, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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