Israel-Hamas Talks Stall as Blinken Tries to Clinch Truce
(Bloomberg) -- Israel and Hamas blamed each other for stalling a cease-fire and hostage deal as US President Joe Biden’s top diplomat arrived in the region to press for an agreement.
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Mediators say the warring sides are getting closer to a pause in the conflict in Gaza that’s been raging for more than 10 months and has roiled the wider Middle East. But objections from both parties raised the prospect of another diplomatic failure.
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“We are conducting negotiations and not a scenario in which we just give and give,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday. “There are things we can be flexible on and there are things that we cannot be flexible on, which we will insist on. We know how to distinguish between the two very well.”
He accused Hamas — backed by Iran and designated a terrorist organization by the US and European Union — of being “completely obstinate.” International pressure should, he said, be directed at the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, who is believed to be in hiding in Gaza.
Hamas released a statement afterward detailing what it said were Israel’s new demands that would prevent a deal.
“We hold Netanyahu fully responsible,” the statement read.
The shekel fell for the first time in five days on Monday, posting the biggest losses among emerging-market peers. Options traders indicated rising nervousness about the conflict, sending the currency’s one-month implied volatility — a forward-looking measure — to the highest level on a closing basis since October, the month the war began.
On Sunday, Israel released data showing its economy slowed more than expected in the second quarter as the war puts increasing financial strain on the country and the government’s defense spending soars.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group, also claimed responsibility for what they said was a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv late on Sunday. Israeli police said the assailant was killed and another person was injured.
The two groups threatened, in a statement on Monday, to carry out more such attacks “as long as the occupation’s massacres, displacement of civilians, and the continuation of the assassination policy continue.”
Suicide bombings in Israel were a hallmark of Palestinian militant groups between 2000-2005 but have been very rare since then.
Blinken Arrives
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Israel on Sunday and met Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog on Monday. He’s set to speak to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant later on. Blinken, who has made nine trips to the region since the conflict erupted, will head to Egypt — one of the main mediators along with the US and Qatar — on Tuesday.
“This is a decisive moment,” Blinken said after meeting Herzog, who holds a ceremonial position in Israeli politics. “Probably the best, maybe the last opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a cease-fire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security. It is time for it to get done.”
During negotiations at a two-day summit last week in Doha, Israel and the US worked to narrow gaps with Egyptian and Qatari officials serving as intermediaries for Hamas, which didn’t send representatives of its own. Talks are set to resume in Cairo later this week, though no official date has been set and it’s still unclear if Hamas will have negotiators present.
The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas fighters swarmed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking roughly 240 hostage. Israel responded with an air and ground assault that’s killed more than 40,000 people, according to health officials in Hamas-run Gaza.
The conflict’s upended Middle Eastern geopolitics, with Israel and Iran trading fire directly and the Jewish state coming under attack from other groups supported by Tehran, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. Militias in Syria and Iraq have also attacked US bases and the Houthis have effectively closed the southern Red Sea to Western ships with drone and missile attacks on vessels.
Tensions have been particularly high since the assassinations late last month of a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut and Hamas’ political chief in Tehran. Israel claimed the first attack but has neither confirmed nor denied killing Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas chief. The group and Iran said Israel was to blame.
Iran has said it will retaliate against Israel, but hasn’t said how. The US has moved more military forces to the region to protect Israel in case of missile and drone strikes directly from Iran or from Hezbollah.
Tehran, on Monday, said it welcomed the cease-fire negotiations but that they are “not directly related to Iran’s right to respond to Israel.”
The US hopes a Gaza cease-fire would turn into a permanent end to hostilities. Israeli negotiators over the weekend “expressed to the prime minister cautious optimism regarding the possibility of progress on the deal,” according to Netanyahu’s office.
Hamas and Israel are discussing a three-phase plan unveiled in May by Biden. That called for a suspension of hostilities, the release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners, some withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the return of civilians to the northern part of the territory.
Netanyahu has previously insisted that the Israeli army remain stationed along the strategic Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors in Gaza to prevent arms smuggling from Egypt and block Hamas gunmen from returning to northern Gaza alongside civilians. Another sticking point in the talks has been the number of Israeli hostages who would be freed in the first round of an exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
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In a possible signal of flexibility, the Netzarim route, which bisects Gaza, went unmentioned in a statement Netanyahu issued after Blinken’s arrival. But Hamas suggested in its statement that Israel continues to insist on a military presence at Netzarim and has placed “new conditions” on an exchange of hostages for prisoners.
On Saturday, two Israeli army reservists were killed in a bomb and gun ambush on the Netzarim route, the Israel Defense Forces said. Since Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza in late October, the IDF has lost around 330 personnel.
--With assistance from Dan Williams, Galit Altstein, Srinivasan Sivabalan and Patrick Sykes.
(Updates with comments from Blinken.)
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