US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Saudi Arabia and Egypt this week to discuss efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, release the remaining hostages held by Hamas since October 7, and increase humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory, a State Department spokesperson said Tuesday.
Blinken will hold talks with Saudi leaders in Jeddah on Wednesday, then travel to Cairo on Thursday for talks with Egyptian authorities, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said from the Philippines, where Blinken is touring.
This will be Blinken’s sixth trip to the Middle East since war erupted in Gaza on October 7, sparked by Hamas’s brutal October 7 onslaught.
“The Secretary will discuss efforts to reach an immediate ceasefire agreement that secures the release of all remaining hostages, intensified international efforts to increase humanitarian assistance to Gaza, and coordination on post-conflict planning for Gaza, including ensuring Hamas can no longer govern or repeat the attacks of October 7,” Miller said in a statement.
Blinken will also discuss “a political path for the Palestinian people with security assurances with Israel,” Miller said.
Blinken confirmed the plans a short time later, saying he would aim to “discuss the right architecture for lasting regional peace.”
“We’ve also impressed upon Israel the imperative of having a plan for Gaza for when the conflict ends, which we hope will be as soon as possible, consistent with Israel’s needs to defend itself and make sure Oct. 7 can never happen again,” Blinken added.
The secretary said it was “absolutely incumbent” upon Israel to prioritize assistance for those in desperate need.
“One hundred percent of the Gaza population is in need of humanitarian assistance,” he said.
Israeli negotiators led by Mossad chief David Barnea arrived in Qatar Monday for a fresh round of talks aimed at securing a deal with the Hamas terror group to free hostages kidnapped from Israel and pause fighting for several weeks.
Israel has agreed to a six-week truce, a partial troop withdrawal and the release of an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for some 40 female, elderly and wounded captives, but Hamas has insisted on an agreement for a permanent ceasefire and the release of hundreds of high-level Palestinian prisoners.
Troops of the 7th Armored Brigade operate in the Hamad Town residential complex in Khan Younis, in a handout image published March 11, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)
Israel has adamantly ruled out a permanent ceasefire and insists it will carry out its declared goal of destroying Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the Hamas demands last week as “ridiculous” but his cabinet nonetheless dispatched a team of negotiators, giving them wide leeway within carefully delineated “red lines” to reach a deal, an Israeli official said Monday.
Talks were expected to kick off with a meeting between Barnea, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Egyptian officials in Doha, a source close to the talks said Monday.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that mediators told Israel the talks in Qatar, expected to last around two weeks, were the final round of negotiations, which would end if no deal was reached.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on Monday acknowledged that while negotiations had been “more elusive than we would have hoped,” there could be a deal immediately if Hamas would just agree to release the female, elderly, and wounded hostages.
Instead, he said, Hamas had “put a proposal on the table where they’ve added a series of other conditions” that are not acceptable to Israel. “They [the Israeli government] regard some of those conditions as going too far, but that’s what a negotiation is about,” Sullivan said.
The US had reportedly initially sought to mediate a ceasefire deal that would pave the way for Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with Israel and lead to a Palestinian state, but the initiative lost momentum with Israel showing little appetite for linking Gazan fighting to a wider peace deal.
Supporters of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis march in the capital Sana’a on March 15, 2024, in support of Palestinians amid the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. (Mohammed Huwais/AFP)
Miller said Blinken’s tour would also include discussions surrounding attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on commercial ships, to restore stability and security in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Hamas and the Houthis both belong to the “axis of resistance,” a collection of Iran-backed movements hostile to Israel and the United States that also includes Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group and Iraqi militias.
The Houthis have attacked Red Sea shipping for months, saying they are targeting Israeli-linked vessels in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Blinken is in Manila as part of a brief Asia tour aimed at reinforcing US support for regional allies against China.
Ditza Heiman, 84, held hostage since October 7, is transferred by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists to the Red Cross in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on November 28, 2023. (Photo by AFP)
Tensions between US President Joe Biden’s administration and Netanyahu’s government have risen sharply in recent weeks as Democrats have expressed increasing impatience with the Israeli leader.
Sullivan said Monday that the US would not support an Israeli offensive in the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah, Hamas’s last major stronghold in the Strip.
Israel has promised to act to evacuate civilians from Rafah before launching an operation in the city, but Sullivan said the US would share ideas with Israeli officials on how to deal with Hamas without a major offensive that could worsen conditions for civilians in the enclave.
The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacres, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid horrific acts of brutality and sexual assault.
Palestinian terrorists drive back to the Gaza Strip with the body of Shani Louk, a German-Israeli dual citizen who was murdered at the Supernova music festival on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Ali Mahmud)
Vowing to destroy the terror group, Israel launched a wide-scale air and ground attack in Gaza. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 31,000 people in the Strip have been killed in the fighting so far, a figure that cannot be independently verified and includes some 13,000 Hamas terrorists Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 gunmen inside Israel on October 7.
The United Nations has warned for weeks that a famine is looming in Gaza, with aid agencies reporting huge difficulties gaining access to the territory, particularly the north.
Donors have turned to deliveries by air or sea, but these are not viable alternatives to land deliveries, UN agencies say.
It is believed that 130 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released prior to that. Three hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 11 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military.
The IDF has confirmed the deaths of 33 of those still held by Hamas, citing new intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza.
One more person is listed as missing since October 7, and their fate is still unknown.
Hamas is also holding the bodies of fallen IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin since 2014, as well as two Israeli civilians, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who are both thought to be alive after entering the Strip of their own accord in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
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Blinken set for fresh Mideast swing to push ‘lasting peace’ amid Gaza truce talks - The Times of Israel
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