Blinken in Egypt to press Israel–Hamas Ceasefire

September 18, 2024

by: JNS

Wednesday, 18 September 2024 | US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Cairo, Egypt on Wednesday morning, his tenth trip to the Middle East since Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

“The secretary will meet with Egyptian officials to discuss ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza that secures the release of all hostages, alleviates the suffering of the Palestinian people, and helps establish broader regional security,” according to the US State Department.

Washington is still working with Egypt and Qatar to come up with a revised Israel–Hamas ceasefire deal, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.

No timetable was presented for a new draft agreement, but Miller said the US was “working expeditiously to try to develop that proposal.”

Blinken said last week that more than 90% of the issues have been agreed to by both Israel and Hamas.

“So, we’re down to a handful of issues, not even a handful of issues that are hard but fully resolvable in our judgment. And as we’ve said before, when you get down to the last 10%, the last 10 meters, those are almost by definition the hardest ground to cover, but we believe that these are fully resolvable,” said Blinken.

“Right now, we are working with our Egyptian and Qatari counterparts to work together to bridge any remaining gaps, and in the coming time, very soon, we’ll put that before the parties, and we’ll see what they say,” he added.

In Monday’s comments, Miller confirmed the two main obstacles to reaching an agreement: Jerusalem’s insistence on maintaining security control of the buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt, called the Philadelphi Corridor; and specifics regarding the Palestinian terrorists to be released from Israeli prisons in return for hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

Posted on September 18, 2024

Source: (This article was originally published by the Jewish News Syndicate on September 18, 2024. Time-related language has been modified to reflect our republication today. See original article at this link.)

Photo Credit: Freddie Everett/US State Department/jns.org