CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss ways to move forward in negotiations on a ceasefire in Gaza, the Egyptian presidency said.
El-Sisi warned of the risk of the Gaza war expanding regionally in a way “difficult to imagine.”
“The ceasefire in Gaza must be the beginning of broader international recognition of the Palestinian state and the implementation of the two-state solution, as this is the basic guarantor of stability in the region,” he added.
Blinken was in Cairo pushing for areas of possible progress on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal in talks planned for later this week, with major areas of dispute left unresolved.
The diplomat flew to Egypt from Tel Aviv, where he said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a US “bridging proposal” aimed at narrowing the gaps between the two sides after talks last week paused without a breakthrough. He urged Hamas to also accept the proposal as the basis for more talks.
The Palestinian group has not explicitly rejected the proposal, but said in a statement it overturns what was previously agreed, without specifying how, and accused Israel and its US ally of spinning out negotiations in bad faith.
The war in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and abducting about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 people since October according to Palestinian health authorities, and of the remaining hostages being held there.
On Tuesday, Israel’s military said it had recovered the bodies of six hostages from southern Gaza. According to Israeli authorities, 109 hostages now remain in the Palestinian territory, of whom around a third are believed to be dead.
In Gaza, Israeli forces battled Hamas-led militants in central and southern areas, and Palestinian health authorities said at least 21 people had been killed early on Tuesday in Israeli strikes, including on a school housing displaced people.
Israel’s military said it had struck Hamas militants embedded in the school.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Tuesday it was still waiting for polio vaccines to arrive after the disease was discovered in the territory, where most people now live in tents or shelters without proper sanitation. It echoed a call by the UN last week for a ceasefire to allow the vaccination campaign.