Doha/Riyadh — Palestinians huddling under bombardment in Gaza on Monday said that they hope a visit to the region by the US secretary of state would finally deliver a truce, in time to head off a threatened new Israeli assault on the last refuge at the enclave’s edge.
Antony Blinken arrived in Riyadh at the start of his first Middle East trip since Washington brokered an offer, with Israeli input, for the first extended ceasefire of the war.
The offer, delivered to Hamas last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators, still awaits a reply from militants who say they want more guarantees it will bring an end to the four-month-old war in the Gaza Strip.
“Impossible to say if we’ll get a breakthrough, when we’ll get a breakthrough,” a senior US official told reporters during the flight to the Saudi capital. “The ball right now is in Hamas’ court.”
Beyond the truce itself, Blinken aims to win backing for US plans for what would follow: rebuilding and running Gaza, and ultimately for a Palestinian state — which Israel now rejects — and for Arab countries to normalise ties with Israel.
“If we get a humanitarian pause, we want to be in a position to move as quickly as possible on the various pieces of ‘day after’,” the US official said.
Washington also seeks to prevent escalation elsewhere in the Middle East, after days of US air strikes against pro-Iranian armed groups across the region.
Meanwhile, Israel has pressed on with its offensive in some of the war’s most intense combat and threatened a new ground assault on Rafah, a small city where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3-million people are now penned against the southern border abutting Egypt.
The ceasefire proposal, described by sources close to the talks, would see a truce of at least 40 days when militants would free civilians among remaining hostages they are holding, followed by later phases to hand over soldiers and dead bodies. The previous truce lasted just one week.
“We want the war to end and we want to go back home, this is all that we want at this stage,” said Yamen Hamad, a father of four reached by messaging app at a UN school in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. The area is one of the few where Israeli tanks have yet to advance and is now jammed with tens of thousands of displaced families.
“All we do is listen to the news through small radios and view the internet looking for hope. We hope that Blinken will tell [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu enough is enough, and we hope our factions decide in the best interest of our people.”
Reuters
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