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Making his ninth trip to the Middle East since the Gaza war began with Palestinian militants’ October 7 attack, the secretary of state is due to meet Israeli leaders before truce talks resume in Cairo.
US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have said negotiations to clinch a ceasefire in the more than 10-month-old war were making progress, and US President Joe Biden said “we are closer than we have ever been”.
But Hamas political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri undercut the cautious optimism, telling AFP that signs of progress after two days of talks in Doha were “an illusion”.
“We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats,” he said.
Previous optimism during months of on-off truce talks has proven unfounded.
But the stakes have risen since the late July killings in quick succession of Iran-backed militant leaders, including Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, and as the humanitarian crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip has deepened with a feared polio outbreak.
After mediators announced they had put forward a “bridging proposal” to close remaining gaps between the warring sides, Hamas said it rejected “new conditions” from Israel and called for a plan outlined by Biden in late May to be implemented.
Talks are due to resume in the Egyptian capital in the coming days.
Before Blinken departed on Saturday night for Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office called for “heavy pressure” on Hamas to reach a breakthrough.
The Palestinian group as well as some analysts and Israeli protesters have accused Netanyahu of hamstringing a deal to safeguard his hard-right ruling coalition.
At a rally in the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Saturday, 51-year-old Guri Lotto said he was protesting to “put pressure on the government, and hopefully the international community will also help put pressure” to secure a hostage release deal and end the war.
As efforts towards a long-sought truce continued, so has the violence in Gaza but also in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hamas ally Hezbollah have traded near-daily fire throughout the war.
– Strikes and battles -Civil defence rescuers in Hamas-run Gaza reported seven killed in Israeli bombardment in Deir al-Balah and four others in air strikes on the northern Jabalia refugee camp.
The Israeli military said troops “continue operational activity” in central and southern Gaza and had “eliminated approximately 20 terrorists” in the past 24 hours in Rafah, on the territory’s border with Egypt.
A Palestinian source said militants were battling Israeli forces in Rafah on Saturday.
The civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike on Saturday killed 15 people from a single Palestinian family Al-Zawaida in central Gaza, where the Israeli military told AFP its forces had targeted rocket launchers.
The military said it was looking into “reports… that as a result of the strike, civilians in an adjacent structure were killed”.
The deaths in Al-Zawaida helped push the Gaza health ministry’s war death toll to 40,074.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
In Lebanon, authorities said an Israeli air strike on Saturday in the Nabatieh area killed 10 Syrians, one of the deadliest attacks on south Lebanon since October. Israel said it targeted a Hezbollah weapons storage facility.
In the West Bank, Israel said late Saturday it had killed “two senior Hamas officials” in Jenin. Hamas’s armed wing confirmed the deaths of militants Ahmad Abu Ara and Raafat Dawasi.
– ‘Conclude the agreement’ -Iran and its regional allies have vowed retaliation for Haniyeh’s death in Tehran, an attack which Israel has not claimed responsibility for, and for an Israeli strike in Beirut that killed a top Hezbollah commander.
Western and Arab diplomats have been shuttling around the region to push for a Gaza deal, which they see as the best way to avert a wider conflagration following the high-profile killings.
In Israel, Blinken will seek to “conclude the agreement for a ceasefire and release of hostages and detainees”, the State Department said.
The proposed deal, which Biden outlined on May 31 but attributed to Israel, would freeze fighting for an initial six weeks and lead to the release of hostages and prisoners.
Out of 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 7 attack, 111 are still held in Gaza including 39 the military says are dead. More than 100 were freed during a one-week truce in November.
The war has displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people at least once, sparked warnings of famine and destroyed much of the territory’s housing and healthcare infrastructure.
On Friday the Palestinian health ministry reported Gaza’s first polio case in 25 years.
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