Palestinians hope Blinken visit can deliver Gaza truce

Palestinians huddling under bombardment in Gaza said on Monday they hoped a visit to the region by the US secretary of state would finally deliver a truce, in time to head off a threatened new Israeli assault on the last refuge at the enclave's edge.

Antony Blinken arrived in Riyadh at the start of his first Middle East trip since Washington brokered an offer, with Israeli input, for the first extended ceasefire of the war.

The offer, delivered to Hamas last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators, awaits a reply from fighters who say they want more guarantees it will bring an end to the four-month-old war in the Gaza Strip.

"Impossible to say if we’ll get a breakthrough, when we’ll get a breakthrough," a senior US official told reporters during the flight to the Saudi capital. "The ball right now is in Hamas’ court."

Beyond the truce itself, Blinken aims to win backing for US plans for what would follow: rebuilding and running Gaza, and ultimately for a Palestinian state - which Israel now rejects - and for Arab countries to normalise ties with Israel.

"If we get a humanitarian pause, we want to be in a position to move as quickly as possible on the various pieces of 'day after'," the US official said.

Washington also seeks to prevent further escalation elsewhere in the Middle East, after days of US air strikes against pro-Iranian armed groups across the region.

British defence minister Grant Shapps told parliament on Monday that the air strikes had depleted the ability of Yemen's Houthis' to target Red Sea shipping but the threat was "not fully diminished."

Israel has pressed on with its offensive and threatened a new ground assault on Rafah, a small city where over half Gaza's 2.3 million people are now penned against the enclave's southern border with Egypt.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting troops on Monday, said Israeli forces had killed or wounded more than half of Hamas' fighting forces and would carry on until "total victory."

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed Netanyahu's assertions, and said he was "playing the game of making delusional victories" in the face of continued resistance.

The ceasefire proposal, as described by sources close to the talks, would see a truce of at least 40 days when fighters would free civilians among remaining hostages they are holding, followed by later phases to hand over soldiers and dead bodies.

Gaza authorities say more than 27,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed in Israel's assault, with thousands more dead feared unrecovered in the rubble.

Source: Reuters