Blinken to arrive in Israel to push for Gaza ceasefire as Hamas dismisses optimism

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is scheduled to visit Israel as part of Washington’s growing diplomatic drive to establish a truce in Gaza that will end the 10-month-old conflict, despite the fact that a top Hamas leader rejected optimism about a solution as “an illusion”.

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The senior US diplomat’s eighth trip to the area since the conflict began in October last year comes only days after the US, together with mediators Qatar and Egypt, proposed bridge measures aimed at closing the gap between the warring sides.

US officials have expressed renewed hope about completing the agreement, but they have also cautioned that more work still to be done.

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“What we’ve done is taken the remaining gaps and bridged them in a way that we believe is now a deal that is ready to close, implement, and move forward,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters on Friday.

However, Hamas political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP: “To say that we are getting close to a deal is an illusion.”

“We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats,” he said.

Blinken is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials during his visit to Israel.

The conversations are taking place amid fears of a regional escalation. Iran has promised retaliation against Israel following the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.

Washington has frequently urged Iran not to take any retaliatory action against Israel. The US official stated that such an action may have “cataclysmic” implications, particularly for Iran.

Foreign ministers from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy issued a joint statement expressing their support for the current ceasefire discussions, encouraging all parties to avoid any “escalatory action.”

Talks over how to execute the agreement are anticipated to continue early next week, before top officials reassemble in Cairo to finalize the agreement later that week.

Israel’s negotiation team voiced “cautious optimism” on Saturday about the likelihood of reaching an agreement, according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office.

Hamas spokesman Jihad Taha told Al Jazeera TV on Saturday that Israel has introduced conditions to the cease-fire talks and accused Netanyahu of exploiting them to stymie progress.

Even as prospects for a cease-fire rose, Israel maintained its lethal attack on Gaza.

On Saturday, an Israeli attack in the Gaza town of Zawayda killed at least 18 Palestinians from the same family and injured scores more, according to medical sources, as Israel issued additional evacuation orders citing Hamas rocket fire nearby.

According to the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, an airstrike on Saturday struck a house and an adjacent warehouse housing displaced persons in the town of Zawayda. An Associated Press reporter counted the fatalities.

Among those murdered was Sami Jawad al-Ejlah, a trader who worked with the Israeli military to transport meat and seafood to Gaza. According to a list furnished by the hospital, the dead included his two wife, 11 of their children ranging in age from 2 to 22, the children’s grandmother, and three other relatives.

“He was a peaceful man,” claimed Abu Ahmed, a neighbor. He stated that about 40 civilians were refuge in the home and warehouse at the time.

Israel also launched an attack on Lebanon on Saturday, killing ten people, including a woman and her two children, according to the country’s health ministry. The strike occurred despite US President Joe Biden’s warning on Friday that “no one in the region should take actions to undermine this [ceasefire and hostage deal] process”.

The current wave of combat in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict began on October 7, when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israel, murdering over 1,200 people and taking approximately 250 captives, according to Israeli estimates.

According to Palestinian health officials, Israel’s ensuing military operation has left much of Gaza in ruins and killed over 40,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are civilians. The figure excludes the thousands of people estimated to be buried beneath the wreckage, as well as those who perished from malnutrition or a lack of medical care as a result of Israel’s damage of the hospital system.

Israel claims to have destroyed 17,000 Hamas fighters without presenting any evidence.