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US secretary of state Antony Blinken landed in Israel on Sunday as Washington intensified its diplomatic push to secure a deal for ending the war between Israel and Hamas and freeing the hostages still held in Gaza.
The US and Arab states view an agreement as the best way of preventing the war between Israel and Hamas from spiralling into a full-blown regional conflict, after Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hizbollah pledged to retaliate for the assassinations of two senior militants last month.
Blinken was due to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials on Monday. His latest trip comes before a meeting in Cairo later this week where the US, Qatar and Egypt, mediators between Israel and Hamas, are hoping to broker a ceasefire.
However, significant gaps between the Israeli and Hamas positions remain, and Netanyahu said on Sunday that, while Israel was prepared to be flexible in some areas, it would not budge in others.
“We are conducting negotiations and not a scenario in which we just give and give. There are things we can be flexible on and there are things that we cannot be flexible on, which we will insist on. We know how to distinguish between the two very well,” he said.
Blinken’s arrival in Tel Aviv came two days after the US, Qatar and Egypt set out a proposal at talks in Doha aimed at bridging the gaps between Israel and Hamas. The proposal is based on a three-stage plan that US President Joe Biden set out in May to end the fighting and secure the release of hostages.
In the days after last week’s meeting, US and Israeli officials voiced guarded hopes about prospects. Biden said that, while the sides were “not there yet”, an agreement could be “close”, and Netanyahu’s office expressed “cautious optimism”.
However, Hamas officials rejected the idea that last week’s talks had led to any progress. In a statement on Sunday evening, the group accused Netanyahu of seeking to sabotage the deal, and said the bridging proposal contained changes that took account of Israeli demands but not of Hamas’s and thus “do not allow for reaching an agreement”.
Earlier, an official briefed on the talks said mediators were still “cautiously optimistic”.
“There are still sticking points on the key issues, but a good indication is Hamas has engaged with mediators around the ‘bridging proposal’ presented on Friday,” the official said. “Separately, mediators have been engaging with Iran in the hopes of avoiding an escalation and giving the ongoing talks a chance.”
The three-stage plan set out by Biden envisages a first stage based on a six-week truce, during which Hamas would free a first group of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
The second phase would involve the release of all hostages and what mediators hope would be an extended ceasefire, in effect ending the 10-month war. The third phase would start the reconstruction of Gaza.
However, one of the sticking points is Israel’s determination to keep a military presence on the border between Gaza and Egypt, known as the Philadelphi corridor — something Hamas has repeatedly rejected.
A Turkish foreign ministry official said on Sunday that Hamas officials had reached out to Ankara, complaining that US officials were painting an overly optimistic picture on the state of talks.
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The official said that, from Hamas’s perspective, the terms of the deal had fallen behind what even the UN Security Council endorsed on June 10.
Biden’s plan, which was initially endorsed by Israel, envisaged Israeli forces withdrawing from populated areas of Gaza in the first stage, and completely in the second stage. However, in recent weeks, Netanyahu has insisted Israel will maintain a presence along the Philadelphi corridor.
He reiterated that position on Sunday and lashed out at “serial leakers”, following reports in the Israeli media that his position had left him at odds with Israel’s negotiating team.
“The prime minister insists that we remain in the Philadelphi corridor in order to prevent terrorist elements from rearming,” his office said in a statement. “The prime minister will continue to work on advancing a deal that will maximise the number of living hostages and which will enable the achieving of all of the war objectives.”
Additional reporting by Adam Samson in Ankara