WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken leaves for Egypt on Tuesday for his 10th trip to the Middle East since the war in Gaza The meeting began nearly a year ago and was partly aimed at refining a proposal to present Israel and Hamas with a ceasefire agreement and hostage release.
Unlike recent mediation missions, America’s top diplomat this time is traveling without optimistic predictions from the Biden administration about an expected breakthrough in the troubled negotiations.
Notably, Blinken has no public plans to go to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during this trip. Fiery public statements by Israeli leader — such as his statement that Israel would accept only “total victory” when Blinken was last in the region in June — and some other unwavering demands have complicated previous diplomacy.
Blinken will travel to Egypt on Wednesday for talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and others. The trip will focus on U.S.-Egyptian relations and consultations with Egypt on Gaza.
The subdued US approach to Middle East diplomacy follows months in which President Joe Biden and his officials publicly discussed an agreement to end the war in Gaza, as it would be within reach, hoping to pressure the far-right government of Netanyahu and Hamas to make a deal.
The Biden administration now says it is working with co-mediators Egypt and Qatar to come up with a revised final proposal to try to get Israel and Hamas to at least a six-week ceasefire that would free some of the hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Americans believe that public scrutiny of the details of the talks now would only harm that effort.
U.S., Qatari and Egyptian officials are still “consulting on what that proposal will entail, and … we are trying to see that it is a proposal that can bring the parties to an eventual agreement,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday.
The State Department noted Egypt’s important role in Gaza peace efforts when it announced last week that the Biden administration planned to give the country its full $1.3 billion in military aidignoring Congressional demands that the U.S. withhold some funding if Egypt does not make sufficient progress on human rights. Blinken told Congress that Egypt has made progress on human rights, including the release of political prisoners.
Blinken’s trip comes amid the risk of a whole new front opening in the Middle East, with Israel threatening escalating military action against the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Biden envoy Amos Hochstein was in Israel on Monday to try to calm tensions after a stop in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has one of the strongest militaries in the Middle East and, like Hamas and smaller groups in Syria and Iraq, is an ally of Iran.
Hezbollah and Israel have traded attacks across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack sparked a war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it will ease the attacks — which have uprooted tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border — only if there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
Hochstein told Netanyahu and other Israeli officials that escalating the conflict with Hezbollah would not help Israelis return to their homes, a U.S. official said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations, said Hochstein stressed to Netanyahu that he risked sparking a broad and protracted regional conflict if he proceeded with a full-scale war in Lebanon.
Hochstein also stressed to Israeli officials that the Biden administration remains committed to finding a diplomatic solution to tensions on Israel’s northern border, either in conjunction with a deal with Gaza or on its own, the official said.
Netanyahu told Hochstein that it “would not be possible to return our residents without a fundamental change in the security situation in the north.” The prime minister said Israel “values and respects” the US support but “will do what is necessary to maintain security and allow the residents of the north to return safely to their homes.”
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, meanwhile, warned during his meeting with Hochstein that “the only way to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be through military action,” his office said.
In Gaza, the US says Israel and Hamas have agreed in principle to a deal and that the main obstacles now are a disagreement over details of the hostage and prisoner swap and control of a buffer zone on the Gaza-Egypt border. Netanyahu has demanded in recent weeks that the Israeli military be allowed to maintain a presence in the Philadelphia corridor. Egypt and Hamas have rejected that demand.
The Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on October 7 killed about 1,200 people. Militants also kidnapped 250 people and are still holding about 100 hostages. About a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, said Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its tally. The war has caused widespread destruction, displaced a majority of Gaza’s population and created a humanitarian crisis.
Netanyahu says he is working to bring the hostages home. His critics accuse him of delaying a deal because it could bring down his hardline coalition government, which includes members opposed to a ceasefire with the Palestinians.
When Biden was asked earlier this month whether Netanyahu was doing enough to secure a ceasefire, he simply said, “no.” But he added that he still believed a deal was close.
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Associated Press editor Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.