U.S. STEPS UP PUSH FOR CEASEFIRE IN GAZA
Abbas urges Biden to intervene
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will step up efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza during meetings in the Middle East on Monday, in what could be a final chance to persuade Israel to call off an attack on Rafah.
The White House said Sunday that Israel has agreed to hear out its concerns.
Israel has “assured us that they won’t go into Rafah until we’ve had a chance to really share our perspectives and our concerns with them,” John Kirby, national security spokesperson at the White House, told ABC News. “So we’ll see where that goes.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, urged U.S. President Joe Biden to intervene, telling a special edition of the World Economic Forum in Riyadh that the U.S. “is the only country capable” of stopping a military operation in Rafah.
Biden was reportedly set to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, Axios reported.
A Hamas official said its delegation plans to respond to the latest Israeli truce plan on Monday, Agence Francepresse reported, offering another glimmer of hope as the Gaza conflict grinds toward the seven-month mark.
“If there’s a deal, we will suspend the operation” in Rafah, Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Channel 12 on Saturday, even as the Israeli military continued to make preparations for an offensive.
Egypt is stepping up efforts at mediation to secure an agreement between Israel and Hamas leading to a ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages, but the two sides remain far apart.
Blinken is travelling to Saudi Arabia to meet with regional counterparts and then on to Israel, according to U.S. and Israeli media. It’s the top U.S. diplomat’s seventh Middle Eastern trip since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
An Israeli assault on Rafah, a safe haven for roughly half the Gaza Strip’s population who’ve fled almost seven months of fighting, would prolong the conflict and threaten Biden’s hopes of getting Arab states to help with postwar rebuilding. It would also stymie a U.S. push to secure a historic accord to establish relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. has urged Israel against a large-scale offensive in Rafah, which Israeli officials say is needed to crush the final stronghold of 5,000 to 8,000 fighters and key leaders from the Palestinian terrorist group.
Israel has been waging a military campaign in Gaza to wipe out Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., EU and others, since it swept across the border and attacked Israeli communities and military bases on Oct. 7.
Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné arrived in Lebanon on Sunday as part of diplomatic attempts to broker a de-escalation in the conflict on the Lebanon-israel border.
Séjourné met with United Nations peacekeeping forces in south Lebanon and with Lebanon’s parliament speaker, army chief, foreign minister and caretaker prime minister.
France “is refusing to accept the worst-case scenario” of a full-scale war in Lebanon, he told journalists after the meetings.
“In southern Lebanon, the war is already here, even if it’s not called by that name, and it’s the civilian population who’s paying the price,” he said.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has exchanged near-daily strikes with Israeli forces in the border region — and sometimes beyond — for almost seven months against the backdrop of Israel’s war against Hezbollah ally Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 350 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups but also including more than 50 civilians. Strikes by Hezbollah have killed at least 10 civilians and 12 soldiers in Israel. Tens of thousands are displaced on each side of the border.
A French diplomatic official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the purpose of Séjourné’s visit was to convey France’s “fears of a war on Lebanon” and to submit an amendment to a proposal Paris had previously presented to Lebanon for a diplomatic resolution to the border conflict.