By Steve Holland
BUELLTON, California (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden, in a cellphone name with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, harassed the pressing have to conclude a Gaza ceasefire-for-hostages deal and pointed to imminent Cairo talks as essential, the White Home mentioned.
Their name adopted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s whirlwind journey to the Center East that ended on Tuesday with out an settlement between Israel and Hamas militants on a truce within the Palestinian enclave.
Negotiators who’ve struggled for months to conclude a ceasefire deal plan to satisfy within the coming days in Cairo.
“The president stressed the urgency of bringing the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure and discussed upcoming talks in Cairo to remove any remaining obstacles,” a White Home assertion concerning the name mentioned.
The assertion mentioned Biden and Netanyahu additionally mentioned U.S. efforts to assist Israel “against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, to include ongoing defensive U.S. military deployments.”
Iran has vowed retaliation over the killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, which it blamed on Israel. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it was behind the killing.
The USA has ordered a guided missile submarine be deployed to the Center East and ordered the Abraham Lincoln strike group to speed up its deployment to the area to be readily available to bolster Israel’s protection.
Blinken and mediators from Egypt and Qatar have pinned their hopes on a U.S. “bridging proposal” aimed toward narrowing the gaps between the 2 sides within the 10-month-old Gaza battle.
“President Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to discuss the ceasefire and hostage release deal and diplomatic efforts to de-escalate regional tensions,” a White Home assertion mentioned earlier.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who on Thursday in Chicago will formally settle for the nomination because the Democrats’ presidential candidate for the Nov. 5 election, additionally joined the decision.
Biden, who’s vacationing at an 8,000-acre ranch within the Santa Ynez Valley of California, had been anticipated to press Netanyahu to melt a brand new Israeli demand that or not it’s allowed to maintain forces alongside a land hall between Egypt and Gaza, a U.S. official mentioned earlier than the decision.
Netanyahu’s workplace on Wednesday denied an Israeli tv report that the nation had agreed to withdraw its troops from the so-called Philadelphi hall, a slender 14.5-km-long (nine-mile-long) stretch of land alongside the coastal enclave’s southern border with Egypt.
Getting a Gaza ceasefire deal is a serious precedence for Biden. A senior U.S. official on Friday described the talks as near a deal however a last settlement has been agonizingly elusive.
In talks to halt preventing within the 10-month-old battle, Hamas is looking for an entire Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, together with the Philadelphi hall.
Israel needs to retain management of the hall, which it captured in late Could, after destroying dozens of tunnels beneath it that it says had served to smuggle in weapons to Gaza’s militant teams.
(This story has been refiled to repair a typo in paragraph 6)
