Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that Israel accepted a “bridging proposal” for a ceasefire deal.
Hamas still needs to accept the proposal.
“In a very constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu today, he confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal, that he supports it,” Blinken said during a press conference. “It’s now incumbent on Hamas to do the same.”
“We’ve seen public statements before that don’t fully reflect where Hamas is,” Blinken added.
“The critical next step is for Hamas to accept the bridging proposal that Prime Minister Netanyahu has now accepted, and then to engage with everyone else on making sure that we have clear understandings of how each party would actually implement the commitments that it’s undertaken in this agreement.”
According to Axios, Hamas will not support the new ceasefire agreement.
“After being briefed by the mediators about what happened in the last round of talks in Doha, we once again came to the conclusion that Netanyahu is still putting obstacles in the way of reaching an agreement, and is setting new conditions and demands with the aim of undermining the mediators’ efforts and prolonging the war,” Hamas said.
Blinken is expected to travel to Egypt on Tuesday to resume ceasefire talks.
