Cairo (AFP) – Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi vowed on Wednesday to intensify Gaza peace talks in a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken aimed at salvaging the negotiations. Blinken’s visit to Cairo came hours after a wave of deadly blasts targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon that further complicated the Gaza talks. This marks Blinken’s 10th trip to the Middle East since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip nearly a year ago. No other regional stops, including Israel, were on his itinerary.
Following the 90-minute meeting, Sisi’s office said the pair discussed “ways to intensify joint efforts between Egypt, the US and Qatar to make progress on ceasefire negotiations and the exchange of hostages and detainees”. Sisi also called for “decisive intervention to remove obstacles to the entry of huge amounts of aid” to Gaza and “ending Israeli violations in the West Bank”, it said. Violence has surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the war broke out in Gaza, with Israel conducting large-scale raids in recent weeks.
Before the meeting, US officials said privately they did not expect any breakthroughs in Cairo, though Blinken would seek to keep up the pressure for a deal between Israel and Hamas. “He’ll be meeting with Egyptian officials about a number of things, but squarely on the agenda is how we get a proposal that we think would secure agreement from both parties,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Tuesday. Miller declined to “put a timetable on when we would put that proposal forward,” saying Washington wanted “a proposal that’s going to get a yes”. “It’s very important that we…stop the haggling back and forth.”
US sources say there are two key sticking points in the negotiations: the Philadelphi corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border that Israel is refusing to withdraw from, and the details surrounding the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel after Hamas made fresh demands. Blinken arrived in Cairo after hundreds of pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded almost simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing 12 people and wounding at least 2,800 others, in blasts the Iran-backed militant group blamed on Israel. Israel has not commented on the blasts.
Hours before the attack, it said it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attacks to include its fight against Hezbollah. In its statement, Sisi’s office said the president “reaffirmed Egypt’s support for Lebanon in the face of the cyber attack it was exposed to”. While in Cairo, Blinken was also expected to discuss strengthening US-Egyptian relations. Egypt is frequently accused of human rights abuses but remains a strategic US partner, and last week Washington decided to release $1.3 billion of military aid without attaching rights conditions, unlike in 2023. After Cairo, Blinken is due to head to Paris to brief his French, British and Italian counterparts.
© 2024 AFP
