Photo: Bashar Taleb Agence France-Presse Antony Blinken will travel to Cairo on Tuesday, where mediators are expected to resume talks on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Shaun Tandon – Agence France-Presse in Jerusalem
Published at 9:49 a.m. Updated at 3:31 p.m.
- Middle East
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Tel Aviv on Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “confirmed to him that Israel accepts the compromise plan” from Washington for a truce in Gaza, saying that it was now “up to” Hamas “to do the same.”
Blinken met with Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders on Monday and is scheduled to travel to Egypt on Tuesday before heading to Qatar, the two other mediating countries pushing Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to accept a plan that includes a ceasefire and the release of hostages in Gaza after more than a decade of war.
For the upcoming talks scheduled for this week, “Prime Minister Netanyahu has promised to send his negotiating team to Doha or Egypt to try to complete this process,” Blinken added.
On his ninth trip to the region since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, sparked on October 7 by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian movement, Blinken met for three hours with Netanyahu, his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
“In a very constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu today, he confirmed to me that Israel accepts the compromise plan. He supports it,” Blinken said. “It is now up to Hamas to do the same.”
Israel and Hamas have said for weeks that they support the three-phase plan proposed in late May by US President Joe Biden. But Hamas is now accusing Israel of adding “new conditions” that it believes are being imposed through “American dictates.”
“Clear understanding”
“What I would say to Hamas and its leadership is that if they really care about the Palestinian people that they claim to represent in some way, then they need to say yes to this deal and work toward a clear understanding on how to implement it,” Blinken continued.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000“The only way, the quickest, the best, the most effective way to alleviate the terrible suffering of the Palestinians caused by the Hamas attack on October 7 and the war that followed is to complete this agreement,” he hammered.
This attack resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data.
Of the 251 people kidnapped that day, 111 are still being held in Gaza, including 39 declared dead by the army.
The Israeli offensive in the besieged Gaza Strip has left at least 40,139 dead, according to the Hamas Health Ministry, which does not provide details on the number of civilians and fighters killed.
The international community now fears a regional conflagration because Iran and its ally, Lebanese Hezbollah, say they are “obliged to retaliate” against Israel, which they blame for the assassinations in Tehran at the end of July. of the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, and in Beirut of a senior commander of Hezbollah, Fouad Chokr.
Following international condemnation following the news Thursday night that a Palestinian man was shot dead in an attack by Jewish settlers on his village in the northern occupied West Bank, Blinken also said he had called on Israeli leaders to take action against the violence.
“We expect to see measures, actions to prevent this kind of violence, actions to hold those responsible accountable,” Blinken said
Polio Vaccination Plan
The US secretary of state said Monday that Israel had agreed to support efforts to vaccinate children in Gaza against polio following a UN appeal in the wake of the first confirmed case of the disease in the Palestinian territory in 25 years.
“We are working with the Israeli government,” he said, “I think we will be able to come up with a plan in the coming weeks. It is urgent.” “It's vital,” Blinken told reporters in Tel Aviv.
The UN called for a weeklong “humanitarian pause” on Friday to vaccinate more than 640,000 children, the same day the Palestinian Authority's health ministry announced the first case of polio, a 10-month-old baby, in the small territory that has been besieged and bombarded relentlessly by Israel since a deadly Hamas attack on October 7.
Mr. Blinken did not specify the modalities of holding this vaccination campaign that the UN is calling for to “prevent the spread of the variant currently circulating” in the Gaza Strip, which has 2.4 million inhabitants, half of whom are children, almost all of whom have been displaced at least once in more than ten months of war.
The UN emphasizes that vaccination coverage must be at least 95% to prevent the spread of polio in Gaza “given that the health, water and sanitation systems (there) are seriously disrupted.”
Agence France-Presse