Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the latest U.S. proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday.
The announcement came after Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for three hours on Monday in a last-ditch attempt to secure a cease-fire deal in Gaza and a release of hostages held by Hamas.
After his meeting with Netanyahu, Blinken met with hostage families while hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside his Israeli hotel, calling for a hostage release.
Blinken’s announcement comes hours before U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to make a speech at the Monday opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, in which Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to be formally nominated as the Democratic candidate for president in the November election.
“In a very constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu today, he confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal. He supports it. It’s now incumbent on Hamas to do the same,” Blinken told reporters later in Tel Aviv.
“What I would say to Hamas and to its leadership is, if it genuinely cares about the Palestinian people that it purports to somehow represent, then it will say ‘yes’ to this agreement, and it will work on clear understandings about how to implement it,” Blinken said, a day after Hamas accused Netanyahu of obstructing the mediation efforts and deviating from Biden’s proposal.
Hamas had called on mediators to implement a framework outlined in late May by U.S. President Joe Biden. The movement said the bridging proposal “responds to Netanyahu’s conditions” and leaves him “fully responsible for thwarting the efforts of the mediators.”
Blinken said he would travel Tuesday to both Egypt and Qatar and meet with the leaders of the two Arab nations, which have worked with the United States on a cease-fire plan.
He said he hoped to hear from the Arab partners the latest on Hamas’s position and he played down the militants’ criticism of the bridging proposal.
“We’ve seen public statements before where they don’t fully reflect where Hamas is,” Blinken said.
The Palestinian resistance group, which did not attend the talks directly, previously said it would not accept any deviations from Biden’s peace plan.
Israel is accused of assassinating Hamas’s main negotiator, political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran, last month, in a blow to negotiations.
Hamas believes the negotiations should focus on ending the war, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the coastal territory, the return of displaced people to their homes, reconstruction and the end of the Israeli blockade.
