US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday appealed to Hamas to urgently accept a ceasefire plan to ease suffering in Gaza, but also entered a public spat with Israel as he capped a new round of shuttle diplomacy.
Blinken closed his ninth wartime trip to the region in which he said that the US-backed truce proposal might be the “last chance” to broker an end the conflict.
“Time is of the essence,” Blinken said after stops in key Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, as well as Israel.
Photo: AFP
“With every passing day, more bad things can happen to more good people who don’t deserve it,” he told reporters before flying out of Doha.
“This needs to get done, and it needs to get done in the days ahead, and we will do everything possible to get it across the finish line,” he said of the truce proposal.
The US last week presented ideas to bridge gaps and, through Qatar and Egypt, has pressed heavily on Hamas to accept and return to talks this week in Cairo.
However, a day after Blinken said that US ally Israel was on board, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted by Israeli media as disagreeing on a key sticking point.
Netanyahu insisted that Israel maintain control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the border between Gaza and Egypt that Israeli troops seized from Hamas, who rely on secret tunnels to bring in weapons.
Blinken said that Israel had already agreed on the “schedule and location” of troop withdrawals from Gaza.
From the start of the conflict, it was made “very clear that the United States does not accept any long-term occupation of Gaza by Israel,” Blinken said when asked about Netanyahu’s remarks.
A senior US official accompanying Blinken, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were discussing sensitive diplomacy, was more blunt, saying that such “maximalist statements” by Netanyahu “are not constructive” in reaching a truce.
Blinken said that differences remained, and called for Israel and Hamas to show “maximum flexibility” in their positions.
Egypt, the first Arab nation to make peace with Israel, has been infuriated by the border takeover. Blinken has hoped to entice Netanyahu to compromise by offering the prospect of Israel achieving greater normalization with the Arab world, including the ultimate prize of Saudi Arabia, guardian of Islam’s two holiest sites.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, meeting Blinken at his Mediterranean summer palace in El Alamein, told him that “the time has come to end the ongoing war,” an official Egyptian statement said.
Blinken then traveled to Doha to meet with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, but a US official said the Qatari ruler was feeling unwell and the two would instead talk on the telephone soon.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS