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A day after the United Nations Security Council endorsed a U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal for Gaza, the world is waiting for Hamas’s leader to respond, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Tuesday.
Putting the onus directly on Hamas’s top official in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, Mr. Blinken, speaking to reporters in Tel Aviv, asked whether the group would act in the best interests of the Palestinian people by accepting the deal. At least, he said, it would pause the fighting and allow more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza.
Alternatively, he said, Hamas could be “looking after one guy,” Mr. Sinwar, who is thought to be hiding underground in Gaza, “while the people that he purports to represent continue to suffer in the crossfire of his own making.”
Making his eighth wartime visit to Israel, the top U.S. diplomat sought to put the public focus on Mr. Sinwar, saying the fate of the U.S.-backed cease-fire plan “is really down to one person at this point.” But he also met with Israeli leaders who have not publicly endorsed the proposal — which President Biden has described as an Israeli offer — and have not said they would abide by the deal if Hamas accepts it.
After meeting on Monday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Blinken said he had received explicit assurances that he supported the proposal, despite doubts the Israeli leader sowed last week when he called the idea of a negotiated permanent cease-fire — which Hamas has called essential — a “nonstarter.”
Mr. Netanyahu has said he will not accept any deal that ends the war before Hamas’s military and governing capabilities are destroyed, even as experts cast doubt on whether those goals can be achieved.
The resolution adopted by the Security Council calls for an immediate cease-fire and negotiations on reaching a permanent end to fighting, and says that if those talks take longer than six weeks, the temporary truce would be extended. That appears to open the door to a longer pause in the war, one that some Israeli leaders have been loath to accept.
Mr. Blinken emphasized that “the commitment in agreeing to the proposal is to seek that enduring cease-fire,” adding: “But that has to be negotiated.”
Along with the immediate cease-fire, the first phase of the three-phase agreement calls for the release of all hostages being held in Gaza in exchange for a larger number of Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons, the return of displaced Gazans to their homes and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory.
The second phase calls for a permanent cease-fire with the agreement of both parties. The third phase would consist of a multiyear reconstruction plan for Gaza and the return of the remains of deceased hostages.
Mr. Blinken spoke on the patio of a seaside hotel in Tel Aviv as several relatives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, with whom he had just met briefly, looked on. Several held signs with photos of their loved ones reading “Bring Them Home.”
Mr. Blinken called Monday’s unanimous Security Council vote a sign that Hamas would be isolated if it does not agree to the proposed deal. The resolution “made it as clear as it possibly could be that this is what the world is looking for,” Mr. Blinken said.
In a statement on Monday, Hamas said it “welcomes what is included in the Security Council resolution that affirmed the permanent cease-fire in Gaza, the complete withdrawal, the prisoners’ exchange, the reconstruction, the return of the displaced to their areas of residence, the rejection of any demographic change or reduction in the area of the Gaza Strip, and the delivery of needed aid to our people in the strip.”
Mr. Blinken called that statement “a hopeful sign.” But he added that what matters “is the word of the Hamas leadership in Gaza” — namely Mr. Sinwar.
Mr. Blinken spoke to reporters before leaving for Amman, Jordan, where he was scheduled to attend a conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza. He also met on Tuesday morning with Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, and with Benny Gantz, who pulled his centrist party out of Israel’s emergency wartime government on Sunday in protest of Mr. Netanyahu’s handling of the war.
