By Shaun Tandon

EL ALAMEIN – Top US diplomat Antony Blinken met Egypt’s president Tuesday (20) for talks about a Gaza ceasefire after saying Israel had accepted a US “bridging proposal” for a deal and urging Hamas to do the same.

The Palestinian militant group, whose October 7 attack triggered the war, said it was “keen to reach a ceasefire” agreement but protested US modifications in the latest proposal, accusing Israel of “setting new conditions”.

Blinken, on his ninth visit to the Middle East in more than 10 months of the Israel-Hamas war, flew from Israel to the Egyptian Mediterranean city of El Alamein, where he met with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and other officials.

“The time has come to end the ongoing war,” Sisi told Blinken, according to an Egyptian statement, warning of the consequences of “the conflict expanding regionally”.

Both Egypt and Qatar are working alongside the United States to broker a truce, which diplomats say would help avert a wider conflagration in the Middle East that could draw in Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, after meeting with Blinken, “expressed his hope that the coming round of negotiations sees a genuine Israeli political will to end the war”, an official statement said.

More truce talks are expected in Egypt this week.

From El Alamein, Blinken was to head to a meeting with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani in Doha, where ceasefire mediators held talks last week with Israeli negotiators.

Hamas had called on the mediators to implement a framework set out by US President Joe Biden in late May, rather than hold more negotiations.

The Iran-backed movement said on Sunday (18) that the current US proposal, which Washington had put forward after two days of meetings in Doha, “responds to Netanyahu’s conditions”.

And on Monday (19), responding to comments by Biden that it was “backing away” from a deal, Hamas said the “misleading claims… do not reflect the true position of the movement, which is keen to reach a ceasefire”.

One of the main sticking points has been Hamas’s long-standing demand for a “complete” withdrawal of Israeli troops from all parts of Gaza, which Israel has repeatedly rejected.

Blinken said Monday he had “a very constructive meeting” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who “confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal”.

Israel and Hamas have blamed each other for delays in reaching an accord that would stop the fighting, free Israeli hostages and allow vital humanitarian aid into the besieged Palestinian territory.

– Gaza school hit –

Fears of a regional escalation have mounted since Hezbollah and Iran vowed to respond after an attack last month, blamed on Israel, killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, shortly after an Israeli strike on Beirut killed a top Hezbollah commander.

The powerful Lebanese group said it launched rockets at Israeli army positions in the annexed Golan Heights on Tuesday, in the latest of the cross-border exchanges which have raged almost daily since the Gaza war began.

Blinken said on Monday that there was “a real sense of urgency here, across the region” to end the war.

He said ongoing mediation efforts were “probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire”.

Israeli military operations in Hamas-ruled Gaza have continued throughout the truce talks.

An Israeli strike hit a school in Gaza City where the civil defence agency said at least 12 Palestinians were killed and the Israeli military said a Hamas command centre was based.

Thousands of displaced Palestinians had sought refuge in the facility, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.

AFP photos showed the Mustafa Hafiz school partly reduced to rubble, with Palestinians fleeing after the strike.

In recent weeks across Gaza, Israel has struck numerous schools the military said were being used by militants. Hamas has denied using civilian infrastructure for military activity.

– Israel recovers dead hostages –

The October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 40,173 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.

Most of the dead are women and children, according to the UN human rights office.

Out of 251 hostages seized during the attack, 105 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

The military said Israeli forces had retrieved the bodies of six hostages from the southern Gaza district of Khan Yunis.

Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum called on the government to “do everything in its power to finalise the deal currently on the table” and rescue the remaining captives.

The Biden framework would freeze fighting for an initial six weeks while Israeli hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and humanitarian aid enters Gaza.

Netanyahu, whose ruling coalition relies on the support of far-right members opposed to a truce, said on Monday that negotiators were aiming to “release a maximum number of living hostages” in the first phase of any ceasefire.

-Agence France-Presse