A US official said on Wednesday that US president Joe Biden planned to speak with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu over ways to keep a possible Gaza peace and hostage offer dead.
The visit comes after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s grueling journey to the Middle East ended on Tuesday without a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas extremists in the Arab area.
Blinken and Qatari negotiators have staked their expectations on a “bridging plan” from the US intended to close the diplomatic ties between the two parties in the 10-month-old Gaza conflict.
According to the US official, Biden was expected to pressure Netanyahu to ease a new Jewish demand that it be allowed to maintain military ties along a area passageway between Egypt and Gaza.
Biden is on a family holiday in the Santa Ynez Valley of California, staying on an 8, 000-acre house while Democrats, meeting in Chicago, select vice president Kamala Harris as the party’s nomination for the Nov. 5 presidential vote.
Trump places a high focus on achieving a peace agreement with Gaza. A senior US official said on Friday that the deals were close to reaching a bargain, but that a resolution has been difficult to come by.
In talks to halt fighting in the 10-month-old war, Hamas is seeking a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, including the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow 14.5-km-long ( nine-mile-long ) stretch of land along the coastal enclave’s southern border with Egypt.
After destroying lots of tunnels beneath it, Israel claims they were used to bring in arms to Gaza’s violent groups, and it took command of the hall in late May.
