Antony Blinken heads to Egypt on Gaza truce push

TEL AVIV: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to Egypt Tuesday for talks on a Gaza ceasefire as he pushes Hamas to accept a deal.

Blinken, who met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday, will afterwards head to Qatar, which along with Egypt is brokering negotiations for a truce in the 10-month Gaza conflict.

His departure from Tel Aviv came as an Israeli kibbutz community announced the death in captivity in Gaza of 79-year-old hostage Avraham Munder, underlining the urgency of a truce and hostage release deal.

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Kibbutz Nir Oz said Munder had endured “physical and mental torture for months” and called his death “murder”. There was no immediate comment from his captors.

The top US diplomat flew to El Alamein, the Mediterranean city famous for a World War II battle in 1942, to speak to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at his summer palace.

He will then head to meet Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, in Doha, the scene of ceasefire talks last week.

At the Doha negotiations, the United States presented proposals to bridge the gaps between Israel and Hamas and seal the May 31 ceasefire blueprint laid out by President Joe Biden, who has faced growing domestic criticism over the war.

Blinken said Monday that Israel has accepted the US proposal and that he would speak to Egypt and Qatar to gauge the reaction of Hamas.

“There is, I think, a real sense of urgency here, across the region, on the need to get this over the finish line and to do it as soon as possible,” Blinken said Monday in Tel Aviv.

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“The United States is deeply committed to getting this job done, to getting it done now.”

Blinken said on Monday that the ceasefire proposal could be the “last chance” as he raised pressure for a deal.

He played down a public rejection by Hamas of the modifications in the latest proposal and said Israel was ready to send a delegation to new talks later this week, which the United States previously said would take place in Cairo.

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A series of reports, however, say that Israel has raised new conditions in recent talks, including insisting on control of the Gaza border with Egypt that Israel seized from Hamas.