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The US military is preparing for the possible collapse of ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas amid fears that their breakdown could spark a broader regional conflict.
General CQ Brown, chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday told the Financial Times: “[I] think about . . .[if] the talks stall or completely stop, how that impacts the tension in the region and the things we need to do to be prepared should that change.”
Speaking while travelling to a meeting of the Ukraine contact group in Germany, Brown said he is weighing how regional actors would respond to the failure of the talks, “and whether they increase any type of their activity, which potentially goes down a path of miscalculation and causes . . . the conflict to broaden”.
“I’m focused on how do we not broaden the conflict, but also how do we protect our forces,” he said.
The Joe Biden administration sees the ceasefire talks as key to lowering tensions across the Middle East and avoiding an all out regional war.
Brown’s comments come as the negotiations remain deadlocked. Israel and Hamas are at odds over details surrounding the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and over Israel’s insistence that it retain troops on a strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt known as the Philadelphi corridor.
While the US has tried to remain upbeat about the talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly played down their progress and on Thursday told Fox News that a deal is “not close”.
Senior US officials have described the talks as 90 per cent complete but admit difficult points remain unsolved. They have rebuffed criticism that they have been overly optimistic about the process.
“We have faced setbacks and setbacks and more setbacks,” US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday. “Without question, we here in the administration are frustrated that we still haven’t been able to conclude this deal.”
Earlier this week Biden expressed frustration with Netanyahu’s role in the negotiations. When asked whether he thought the Israeli prime minister was doing enough to enable a deal, he replied “no”. Washington has nonetheless largely put the onus on Hamas to agree to a deal and in recent days has publicly blamed the militant group for the stalled talks.
A senior US official said the deaths of six Israeli hostages in Hamas custody last week has “brought a sense of urgency to the [negotiating] process”, but has also “called into question Hamas’s readiness to do a deal of any kind”.
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