Blinken to visit Egypt to continue talks on hostage release

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Egypt on Wednesday to continue the efforts to reach a ceasefire and hostage release, the State Department announced on Monday, according to CNN.

While Blinken’s previous visits to the region since the start of the war have included a stop in Israel, this time he will not visit Israel.

The State Department said in its announcement that Blinken “will meet with Egyptian officials to discuss ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza that secures the release of all hostages, alleviates the suffering of the Palestinian people, and helps establish broader regional security.”

Blinken will also “co-chair the opening of the U.S.-Egypt Strategic Dialogue with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty,” the statement said, noting that the “strategic dialogue aims to strengthen the bilateral relationship and deepen economic development, as well as increase people-to-people ties through culture and education.”

The United States has been pushing an outline for a ceasefire and hostage release deal that President Joe Biden first laid out in May, but Hamas has continuously rejected every proposal that has been presented to it.

Last week, Hamas once again said that its negotiators reiterated the group’s readiness to implement an “immediate” ceasefire with Israel in Gaza based on a previous US proposal without new conditions from any party.

Despite recent pessimism about the prospects of a deal coming together, Blinken last week downplayed the pessimism and said that the US will present a new proposal for a deal “very soon”.

“On the ceasefire, here’s what I can tell you: More than 90 percent of the issues have been agreed, decided. So we’re down to a handful of issues – not even a handful of issues – that are hard but fully resolvable, in our judgment. And as we’ve said before, when you get down to the last 10 percent, the last 10 meters, those are, almost by definition, the hardest ground to cover. But we believe that these are fully resolvable,” Blinken told reporters.

“Right now, we’re working intensely with our Egyptian and Qatari counterparts to work together to bridge any remaining gaps. And in the coming time, very soon, we’ll put that before the parties and we’ll see what they say,” he added.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on Monday that an agreement is ultimately dependent on political will.

“We continue to work with Egypt and Qatar to find a way forward in the negotiations that will be acceptable to both parties. But as hard as we are going to work on texts and creative formulas, this is ultimately a question of political will,” Thomas-Greenfield said.