Blinken urges Israel to ‘capitalise’ on Sinwar death and reach Gaza truce

TEL AVIV/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/CAIRO: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in talks on Tuesday to capitalise on the killing of Hamas’ leader by securing the release of the Oct. 7 attack hostages and ending the war in Gaza.

After repeated abortive attempts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Blinken was making his 11th trip to the Middle East since the Gaza war erupted - and the last before a presidential election that could upend US policy.

Blinken was also looking for ways to defuse an escalating spillover conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, where overnight at least 18 people were killed, including four children, and 60 injured by an Israeli airstrike near Beirut’s main state hospital.

Blinken faced an uphill struggle on both fronts.

He spelled out US hopes that the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar - blamed for triggering a year of devastating warfare by planning the deadly group assault from Gaza on Israeli territory on Oct. 7 last year - will provide a new opportunity for peace.

“The Secretary underscored the need to capitalise on Israel’s successful action to bring Yahya Sinwar to justice by securing the release of all hostages and ending the conflict in Gaza in a way that provides lasting security for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” the US State Department said in a statement on the Jerusalem meetings.

In a statement issued by his office, Netanyahu said Sinwar’s elimination “may have a positive effect on the return of the hostages, the achievement of all the goals of the war, and the day after the war”.

But there was no mention of a possible ceasefire after a year of war in which Hamas’ military capabilities have been greatly degraded and Gaza largely reduced to rubble, with most of its 2.3 million Palestinians displaced.

Western allies of Israel see Sinwar’s killing last week as a potential breakthrough by providing Netanyahu’s far-right government political cover to assert that its objectives have been achieved in Gaza.

But Israel has maintained that it will not stop fighting until the Palestinian group has been utterly destroyed as a military force and governing entity in Gaza.

For its part, Hamas has refused to free scores of hostages in Gaza seized in its Oct. 7, 2023 raid on Israel without an Israeli pledge to end the war and pull out of the territory.