New York
\nA Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal \u201cnow is in sight\u201d, the United States envoy to the United Nations has told the UN Security Council (UNSC) as a new round of talks begins in the Egyptian capital.
\nSpeaking before the council on Thursday, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called on Hamas to accept a \u201cbridging proposal\u201d put forward by the US that appears to differ from a previous proposal adopted by the UNSC and agreed to by the Palestinian group.
\nThe proposal ostensibly aims to bridge unresolved disputes between Israel and Hamas to end the violence in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed at least 40,265 Palestinians, wounded more than 93,000 others and created a humanitarian crisis since beginning their offensive in October.
\n\u201cIsrael has accepted the bridging proposal. Now Hamas must do the same,\u201d she said. \u201cAs members of this council, we must speak with one voice, and we must use our leverage to press Hamas to accept the bridging proposal.\u201d
\nThe remarks by Thomas-Greenfield continued a trend of US officials claiming that Israel has agreed to a deal that Hamas has yet to accept despite indications that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s insistence on Israel retaining strips of territory inside Gaza is the primary obstacle to a deal.
\nHamas has accused Netanyahu of adopting positions intended to sabotage progress towards an agreement to end Israel\u2019s nearly 11-month war in Gaza.
\nMeanwhile, a new round of Israel-Hamas negotiations, mediated by the US and Egypt, is under way in Cairo. A Qatari delegation is expected to join the talks on Friday, the Reuters news agency said.
\nNetanyahu\u2019s spokesman Omer Dostri said an Israeli delegation, that includes the heads of Israel\u2019s Mossad spy agency and Shin Bet security service, was taking part in the Cairo talks and \u201cnegotiating to advance a hostage [release] agreement\u201d.
\nMore than 200 people were taken hostage by Hamas when it attacked Israel on October 7.
\nIn June, a ceasefire plan adopted by the UN Security Council did not allow Israeli forces to maintain control of territory inside Gaza, such as the Philadelphi Corridor along the border with Egypt and the Netzarim Corridor, which bisects Gaza.
\nUS President Joe Biden\u2019s administration has nonetheless stated that the \u201cbridging proposal\u201d is consistent with the UN-backed deal. Hamas has accused the US of changing the contours of the previous deal after Netanyahu refused to budge on a series of issues.
\nUS Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week that Netanyahu had agreed to the US-backed proposal that is \u201cclear\u201d on the status of Israeli force withdrawals, but Netanyahu also stated this week that the two corridors will remain under Israeli control.
\nA report by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth on Wednesday quoted anonymous Israeli officials who called the US claims that Hamas is the primary obstacle to a deal a \u201cgift\u201d to Netanyahu and a potential \u201cdeath blow\u201d to the negotiations.
\nThe Biden administration has claimed for months that a ceasefire deal is at hand despite remaining disagreements between Hamas and the Netanyahu government, which has said it will continue the war until Hamas is destroyed even if a temporary ceasefire is reached.
\nThe US has thus far refused to consider pressuring Israel into greater flexibility through leverage such as the suspension of arms sales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New York A Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal \u201cnow is in sight\u201d, the United States envoy to the United Nations has told the UN Security Council (UNSC) as a new round of talks begins in the Egyptian capital. Speaking before the council on Thursday, US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called on Hamas to accept a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":69306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69334,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69324\/revisions\/69334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}