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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in the northern city of al-Alamein on Tuesday to discuss the latest on a potential Gaza cease-fire deal.
Blinken briefed el-Sissi on the results of his visit to Israel, stressing the U.S. commitment to the efforts aimed at reaching a truce deal in the Gaza Strip, the presidency said in a statement.
El-Sissi warned of the “hard to imagine” consequences of expanding the conflict regionally, saying that stopping the bloodshed should be the main driver for all parties.
The president also said a cease-fire in Gaza should be the beginning of wider international recognition of the Palestinian state and the implementation of the two-state solution, adding that it would be the main guarantee for stability in the region.
“The cease-fire in Gaza must be the beginning of broader international recognition of the Palestinian state and the implementation of the two-state solution, as this is the basic guarantor of stability in the region,” he added.
Earlier Tuesday, Blinken arrived in Egypt from Tel Aviv, where he said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a U.S. “bridging proposal” aimed at narrowing the gaps between the two sides after talks last week paused without a breakthrough. He urged Hamas to also accept the proposal as the basis for more talks.
The Palestinian resistance group has not definitively rejected the proposal but has said it backtracks from areas previously agreed and has accused Israel and its U.S. ally of spinning out the negotiations process in bad faith.
After meeting President El-Sisi, Blinken is expected to head to Doha, which alongside Washington and Cairo has been helping mediate the on-off Gaza talks for months.
At stake is the fate of tiny, crowded Gaza, where Israel’s genocidal war has killed more than 40,000 people since October according to Palestinian health authorities and of the remaining hostages being held there.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion that killed around 1,200 people and abducted about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
On Tuesday, Israel’s military said it had recovered the bodies of six hostages from southern Gaza, adding that 109 hostages remained in the Palestinian territory, of whom Israel around a third are believed already to be dead.
In Gaza, Israeli forces clashed with Hamas members in central and southern areas and Palestinian health authorities said at least 12 people were killed early Tuesday in Israeli strikes, including on a school housing displaced people.
Israel’s military claimed it had struck Hamas members embedded within the school.
Gaza’s health ministry said Tuesday it was still waiting for polio vaccines to arrive after the disease was discovered in the territory, where most people now live in tents or shelters without proper sanitation. It echoed a call by the U.N. last week for a cease-fire to allow the vaccination campaign.
Proposal
Blinken has called the latest push for a deal “probably the best, possibly the last opportunity” and said his meeting with Netanyahu was constructive, adding it was incumbent on Hamas to accept the bridging proposal.
U.S. officials have not spelled out what is in the proposal or how it differs from previous versions. “There are questions of implementation and making sure that it’s clearly understood what each side will do to carry out its commitments,” Blinken said Monday.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan, however, criticized the latest developments, saying the U.S. bridging proposal that Netanyahu accepted raised ambiguities because it was different from what the group had previously agreed.
Months of on-off talks have circled the same issues, with Israel saying the war can only end with the destruction of Hamas as a military and political force and Hamas saying it will only accept a permanent, not temporary, cease-fire.
There are disagreements over Israel’s continued military presence inside Gaza, particularly along the border with Egypt, the free movement of Palestinians inside the territory and the identity and number of prisoners to be freed in a swap.
Egypt is particularly focused on a security mechanism for the Israel-occupied Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow border strip between Egypt and Gaza.
Both Hamas and Egypt are opposed to Israel keeping troops there but Netanyahu has said they are needed on the border to stop alleged weapons smuggling.
Egyptian security sources said the U.S. has proposed an international presence in the area, a suggestion the sources said could be acceptable to Cairo if it was limited to a maximum of six months.
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