Blinken arrives in Mideast as US pushes for ceasefire vote at UN
By Michael Crowley
WASHINGTON -Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned to the Middle East on Monday (10) and was set to meet with top Israeli officials, as the United States asked the UN Security Council to vote on its latest resolution for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Blinken held talks in Cairo with President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, whose government has helped mediate negotiations between Israel and Hamas over a proposed ceasefire deal offered by Israel and backed by the United States. Later Monday, Blinken was scheduled to meet in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Tensions have grown between President Joe Biden and Netanyahu over the number of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel’s military during the war in Gaza. Biden said last month that he had paused the delivery to Israel of some larger bombs to ensure that they were not used in an assault on the Gaza city of Rafah.
Blinken will also be stepping into fresh tumult in Israel, following the move by Benny Gantz, a rival of Netanyahu, and his centrist National Unity party to leave the emergency wartime government in protest of Netanyahu’s handling of the war.
An official schedule released by the State Department showed that Blinken planned to meet in the evening Monday with Netanyahu in Jerusalem and with Gallant in Tel Aviv. The schedule did not show a meeting with Gantz.
Pressing for a ceasefire deal will be one of Blinken’s top priorities during his trip. But more than two weeks have passed since Israel presented the deal to Hamas, and even Netanyahu’s government has not formally embraced it. The Israeli prime minister, under pressure from far-right members of his government, has said the war in Gaza should continue until Hamas’ military and governing capabilities are destroyed.
There has also been no official response to the proposal from Hamas. Some Hamas officials have suggested that they cannot agree to a limited halt to the fighting without greater assurances that Israel is prepared to negotiate an end to the war. US officials say they are awaiting more definitive word from Hamas.
And it was unclear whether the Israeli raid on Saturday (8), which freed four hostages from Hamas captivity but killed dozens of Palestinians, might have further set back the chances that the militant group would agree to a deal with Israel.
“It’s a legitimate question,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, told CNN on Sunday. “It’s hard for me to put myself in the mindset of a Hamas terrorist. We don’t know exactly what it is that they’re going to do.”
On his eighth trip to the region since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Blinken also plans to visit Qatar, another Arab nation mediating between Israel and Hamas, and which hosts Hamas’ political leaders. The group’s ultimate decisions are made by its leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.
Blinken’s efforts come a few days after inconclusive visits to Egypt and Qatar last week by CIA Director William Burns, and Brett McGurk, the top White House official for Middle East affairs, in pursuit of a cease-fire deal.
In Jordan, Blinken will attend a conference Tuesday on humanitarian aid for Gaza co-hosted by Jordan, Egypt and the United Nations.
-New York Times
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