U.S Secretary of State, Antony Blinken has arrived in Egypt for the first leg of a Middle East tour aimed at securing a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
It is Blinken’s eighth trip to the region since October 7, 2024, and he is expected to push for the ceasefire deal which U.S President, Joe Biden has been backing.
It will be very tough for Blinken to try to push forward with this ceasefire deal, as the two sides, Israel and Hamas, are still very different on what they consider to be a good ceasefire deal.
He is expected to meet with Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo before traveling to Israel later today, Monday, June 10, 2024.
In Israel, Blinken will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the Defence Minister.
He will also meet with Benny Gantz, even though Gantz is no longer a member of the war cabinet.
Gantz resigned from Netanyahu’s government on Sunday, June 9, 2024, after reaching his self-imposed deadline to leave if Netanyahu did not lay out a new plan for the war in Gaza.
After meeting with Gantz, Blinken will meet with Israeli President, Isaac Herzog.
He is then expected to travel to Amman where there are humanitarian aid conferences taking place tomorrow, Tuesday, June 11, 2024.
He’ll meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and various other officials there.
Blinken will then head to Doha, where he’ll meet with Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and various other leaders.
If there is any breakthrough, it’s likely that’s where it’s going to be announced.
Meanwhile, Senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri said that the group will engage positively with any proposal that brings about an end to the war, while calling on the United States to push Israel towards a permanent ceasefire.
“We call upon the U.S administration to put pressure on the occupation to stop the war on Gaza,” Abu Zuhri was quoted as saying.
Separately, Ismail Haniyeh, the Head of Hamas’s political bureau, spoke to a news agency about the US-proposed ceasefire deal and prospects for ending the war.
He said that Israel attacked the Nuseirat camp and freed four Israeli captives while killing at least 274 Palestinians to block any agreement that would end the war.
Haniyeh also accused the U.S of being a part of the attack, saying that the Biden administration is “no less criminal” than Israel’s leadership.
Additionally, Haniyeh addressed the resignations of Israeli war cabinet Ministers; Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, saying that they are trying to “jump off the boat … before it sinks.”
He asserted that the resignations of the two Israeli officials show that Israel’s political system is in a state of “collapse.”
Haniyeh also claimed that Gantz, who has been touted as a possible centrist alternative to Netanyahu, is no different from Prime Minister Netanyahu.
“Both are murderers seeking destruction,” he said.
No Military Solution To Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
According to former Israeli negotiator, Gershon Baskin, the Israeli government is still operating under the misguided premise that military pressure will free its captives, despite mounting evidence that such pressure has actually put many of them in peril.
“There is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the future of Gaza, to the question of Hamas,” Baskin, who helped mediate the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit back in 2011, told a news agency.
“There are only political solutions … and those are the ones that are not being pursued by the government of Israel.”
Gershon Baskin
Israeli people, he added, are united in their desire for Hamas to lose power in Gaza and for the captives to come home, but see “very few coherent answers in front of us … to find a way out of this war.”
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