U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the latest Gaza cease-fire deal could be the last chance to secure the return of hostages and end the fighting between Hamas and Israel.
"This is a decisive moment — probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security," Blinken said Monday.
Blinken met Monday with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant later in the day.
This is his ninth trip to the region since the hostilities started on Oct. 7. Negotiators from the United States, Egypt and Qatar met in Doha, Qatar, last week to craft the latest version of the deal, and discussions are expected to resume in Cairo later this week.
Violence continues
Shortly after Blinken arrived in Israel on Sunday, a bomb exploded near a synagogue in Tel Aviv, killing the person carrying it and injuring a passerby, Israeli police said. On Monday, police described the bombing as a terror attack.
Also on Monday, Israel continued advances north of Khan Younis and stepped up its bombardment of Gaza City suburbs overnight, Reuters news service reported.
Lebanon's health ministry said an Israeli strike killed two people in south Lebanon, and Lebanon's official National News Agency reported Israeli shelling and raids in several areas.
Hezbollah announced it launched a "simultaneous air attack" with "explosive-laden drones" on two Israeli military positions — a barracks near the border and a base near the coastal town of Acre.
Last month, an Israeli strike near Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, one of Hezbollah’s top commanders, shortly before an attack in Tehran killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. Although Israel didn’t claim responsibility for Haniyeh’s death, it has been blamed for the attack.
Both Iran and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, vowed revenge for the killings. A cease-fire deal is viewed as a way to prevent a larger war in the region.
In his remarks Monday, Blinken said he was in Israel as part of “an intensive diplomatic effort on President Biden's instructions to try to get this agreement to the line, and ultimately over the line.”
He said it’s time for Israel and Hamas to agree to a truce.
“It’s also time to make sure that no one takes any steps that could derail this process,” he said. “So we’re looking to make sure that there is no escalation, that there are no provocations, that there are no actions that in any way could move us away from getting this deal over the line, or for that matter, escalating the conflict to other places and to greater intensity.”
Negotiators have been trying to reach an agreement for months.
The basic outline of a cease-fire deal remains the same. It is a three-phase process in which fighting would be halted for six weeks, while Hamas would begin to release the estimated 110 hostages it is still holding — including about 70 of them living — and Israel would free hundreds of Palestinians it has jailed.
The mediators are hoping to end the war that started Oct. 7 with the Hamas attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people and led to the capture of about 250 hostages. Israel’s counteroffensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to Hamas-controlled health authorities. The Israeli military says that death toll includes thousands of Hamas militants it has killed.
Natasha Mozgovaya contributed to this report. Material from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters was used in this article.
