US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting with key Israeli leaders on Monday, August 19, to try to unblock the process for a ceasefire in Gaza, which Israel and Hamas mutually accuse each other of failing.
Arriving in Israel on Sunday, the head of American diplomacy is to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and President Isaac Herzog.
Key facts:
⇒ In Israel, Blinken says ‘this may be the last’ chance for a Gaza truce
⇒ Netanyahu wants more pressure in the face of Hamas’ “stubborn refusal”
⇒ Biden considers a truce in Gaza “still possible”
In Israel, Blinken says ‘this may be the last’ chance for Gaza truce
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that this is “perhaps the last” chance to reach a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip after more than ten months of war.
“This is a watershed moment, this is probably the best, maybe the last opportunity to bring the hostages home, to get a ceasefire and to put everybody on a path to lasting peace and security,” Blinken said as he met in Tel Aviv with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on his ninth trip to the region since the Gaza war began on October 7.
Netanyahu wants more pressure in the face of Hamas’ “stubborn refusal”
On Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu called for “directing pressure on Hamas” and “not towards the Israeli government”, denouncing a “stubborn refusal” by the Palestinian movement to conclude a ceasefire agreement, after two days of negotiations in Doha between the Israeli side and the American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
“We hold Benjamin Netanyahu fully responsible for having thwarted the efforts of the mediators and obstructed an agreement,” in disregard of the “lives of the hostages” held since October 7, Hamas retorted in a statement. Joe Biden, however, judged on Sunday evening that a truce in Gaza was “still possible” and assured that the United States “was not abandoning” its efforts.
“There are things we can be flexible on and things we cannot be flexible on,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under increasing pressure internationally and at home to end the war in Gaza.
11 dead in strikes in Jabalia
On Sunday, the Civil Defense in Gaza reported 11 deaths in strikes in Jabalia (north) and Deir al-Balah (center). “Are these women and children part of the resistance?” asks Ahmed Abou Kheir, an eyewitness to a bombing that killed a mother and her six children in their apartment in Deir al-Balah.
AFPTV saw Palestinians fleeing by all means from a makeshift camp in the Khan Younis region after Israeli tanks took up positions nearby. “The tanks are getting closer to us, it scares us a lot, we really don’t know where to go,” said Lina Saleha, a 44-year-old woman.
In the occupied West Bank, where the war in Gaza has intensified violence, an Israeli security guard was killed on Sunday by a “terrorist”, according to the army, in a Jewish settlement near a Palestinian village where a raid by settlers had left one dead.