Palestinians pin hopes on Gaza truce before Rafah push
The top United States diplomat has met Saudi Arabia’s de-facto ruler in a visit that Palestinians hope will deliver a truce before a threatened Israeli assault on Rafah, the border city where about half of the population is sheltering.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, June 7, 2023. Source: Twitter.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Riyadh at the start of his first Middle East trip since the US brokered an offer, with Israeli input, for the first extended ceasefire of the war.
Blinken’s meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman lasted about two hours, and the secretary did not answer reporters’ questions as he returned to his hotel.
The offer, delivered to Hamas last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators, awaits a reply from militants who say they want more guarantees it will bring an end to the four-month-old war in the Gaza Strip.
“Impossible to say if we’ll get a breakthrough, when we’ll get a breakthrough,” a senior US official told reporters during the flight to the Saudi capital.
“The ball right now is in Hamas’ court.”
Beyond the truce itself, Blinken aims to win backing for US plans for what would follow: rebuilding and running Gaza, and ultimately for a Palestinian state – which Israel now rejects – and for Arab countries to normalise ties with Israel.
Israel has pressed on with its offensive and threatened a new ground assault on Rafah, a small city on the southern border with Egypt where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are living, mostly in makeshift tents.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting troops on Monday, said Israeli forces had killed or wounded more than half of Hamas’ fighting forces and would carry on until “total victory”.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed Netanyahu’s assertions, and said he was “playing the game of making delusional victories” in the face of continued resistance.
The ceasefire proposal, as described by sources close to the talks, envisions a truce of at least 40 days when militants would free civilians among the remaining hostages they are holding, followed by later phases to hand over soldiers and dead bodies.
“We want the war to end and we want to go back home, this is all that we want at this stage,” said Yamen Hamad, 35, a father of four reached by messaging app at a United Nations school in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
The area is one of the few where Israeli tanks have yet to advance, and is jammed with tens of thousands of displaced families.
“All we do is listen to the news through small radios and view the internet looking for hope. We hope that Blinken will tell Netanyahu enough is enough, and we hope our factions decide in the best interest of our people.”
In one of the war’s biggest battles, Israeli tanks have been advancing for two weeks in Khan Younis, the main southern city, which was already housing hundreds of thousands of people who fled other areas.
Fighting has also resurged in Gaza City in the north of the Strip, in areas Israel said it subdued in the war’s first two months.
The Israeli military said on Monday its forces had killed dozens of Palestinian fighters in combat in areas in northern, central and southern Gaza over the last 24 hours.
UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinians, said a food convoy headed there had come under fire although nobody was hurt.
UNRWA, a source of critical aid for Palestinians, has said it may be forced to shut down its operations across the region by the end of this month after donors withdrew funding following Israeli allegations some of its staff were involved in the October 7 attack by Hamas militants that precipitated the war.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday said he had appointed former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna to lead an independent review into the allegations.
AAP
The Americans are very obviously greedily taking up what they see as an opportunity to exploit the situation and be seen at end as the ones who brought about the impossible: peace to the region and a Palestinian State. I do think it’s more about that than any sensible and cautious plan for a Palestinian state that would be healthy within itself and ensure secure borders for Israel. The latter will take more than US wishes to bring about it and no other is feasible.