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US secretary of state Antony Blinken has told Israel and Hamas that “the time is now” for a deal that would free the remaining hostages held in Gaza and halt more than six months of fighting.
Blinken, speaking on his latest trip to Israel, put pressure on the militant group to accept the latest proposal put forward by international mediators, after Israel appeared to soften its stance on key conditions in recent days.
“There is a very strong proposal on the table right now. Hamas needs to say yes and needs to get this done,” he told families of those being held hostage, after also holding talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.
His trip is aimed at overcoming Israeli resistance to a deal that would require it to wind down its military operations in Gaza, at least temporarily.
Netanyahu said this week that a planned military offensive on the southern Gazan city of Rafah, where more than 1mn people have taken sanctuary, would proceed whether a deal with Hamas was reached or not.
While Blinken praised Israel for making “very important compromises” at the hostage talks, he reiterated the US’s opposition to an offensive in Rafah, amid UN and western warnings that it would be disastrous in such a densely populated area.
“We cannot, will not support a major military operation in Rafah absent an effective plan to make sure that civilians are not harmed and no, we’ve not seen such a plan,” Blinken told reporters. “There are other ways, and in our judgment better ways, of dealing with the . . . ongoing challenge of Hamas.”
Netanyahu is facing mounting pressure from far-right members of his governing coalition not to halt the more than six month Israeli offensive in Gaza that began in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack.
The hostage talks had stalled for weeks, after several rounds that fell apart over Hamas’s demands for a permanent ceasefire and Israel’s refusal to withdraw troops from Gaza and end its offensive.
Regional diplomats began the week cautiously hopeful that the addition of language that hints at “restoring a sustainable calm” could convince Hamas to accept the latest proposal, alongside the promise of a surge in humanitarian aid for the devastated enclave and allowing displaced Gazans to return to the strip’s north.
In earlier rounds of talks, Hamas had proposed that a temporary truce in exchange for the civilian hostages could be used to negotiate a longer-lasting ceasefire for the release of dozens of Israeli soldiers it also holds captive.
The talks are being mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s political office in Doha and has become a conduit between Israeli and US intelligence and the Palestinian militant group. The Gulf nation has grown increasingly frustrated with Israel and Hamas as mediators try to push a deal over the line.
“We only agreed to mediate under two conditions: the first, that both sides want us to conduct them, and the second, that both sides are interested in the deal. We have doubts that both sides are ready for a deal at the moment,” a senior Qatari official said.
A deal would become even less likely were Netanyahu to proceed with his plan to send troops into Rafah. An “operation in Rafah prevents the deal”, the official said.
The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, which is considered close to the Lebanese militant group and Hamas ally Hizbollah, published the most detailed outlines of the proposal that Hamas is said to be studying. It included a phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from the heart of the Gaza Strip in order to allow displaced Palestinians in the south to return to their homes and neighbourhoods in the north.
The proposal says Israel would release 20 Palestinian prisoners for every civilian hostage, and 40 for every female soldier released. Crucially, Hamas would submit a list of Palestinian prisoners it seeks to be released, including those that Israel considers to be “heavy”, or convicted of violence and sentenced to life imprisonment.
That is in contrast to a prior hostage-for-prisoner swap that took place in November, where Israel released Palestinian women and children, mostly convicted of minor crimes.
Netanyahu’s extreme-right coalition partners have threatened to collapse his coalition if he accepts a deal that wound down the war without an invasion of Rafah.
Fresh polls show the prime minister’s popularity plunging, with less than a third of Israelis believing he is doing all he can to secure the release of the hostages.
Nearly half of those polled by public broadcaster Kan supported an end to the war and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners to secure the freedom of the remaining captives. Only 17 per cent believed Netanyahu’s position that Israel was “one step away from victory”, and 58 per cent said he should resign.
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