Blinken To Brief Israeli Leaders As Hamas Puts Forward Plan For Cease-Fire, Hostage Deal

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to meet Israeli leaders on Wednesday as Hamas put forward a detailed plan for a new cease-fire and hostage release deal, but both sides remain dug in on thus far elusive goals as the war enters its fifth month.

Hamas laid out a three-phase plan to unfold over 4 1/2 months, responding to a proposal drawn up by the United States, Israel, Qatar and Egypt. All hostages would be released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including senior militants, and an end to the war.

The proposal would effectively leave Hamas in power in Gaza and allow it to rebuild its military capabilities, a scenario that Israeli leaders have adamantly rejected. President Joe Biden said Hamas’ demands are “a little over the top” but that negotiations will continue.

The deadliest round of fighting in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, leveled entire neighborhoods, driven the vast majority of Gaza’s population from their homes, and pushed a quarter of the population to starvation.

Iran-backed militant groups across the region have conducted attacks, mostly on U.S. and Israeli targets, in solidarity with the Palestinians, drawing reprisals as the risk of a wider conflict grows.

Israel remains deeply shaken by Hamas’ Oct 7 attack, in which militants burst through the country’s vaunted defenses and rampaged across southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting some 250, around half of whom remain in captivity in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war will continue until “total victory” over Hamas and the return of all the remaining hostages.

Blinken, who is on his fifth visit to the region since the war broke out, is trying to advance the cease-fire talks while pushing for a larger postwar settlement in which Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel in return for a “clear, credible, time-bound path to the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

But the increasingly unpopular Netanyahu is opposed to Palestinian statehood, and his hawkish governing coalition could collapse if he is seen as making too many concessions.

There is little talk of grand diplomatic bargains in Gaza, where Palestinians yearn for an end to fighting that has upended every aspect of their lives.

“We pray to God that it stops,” said Ghazi Abu Issa, who fled his…