The United States is still working with Egypt and Qatar to come up with a revised Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.
Mediators from Washington were in talks with their counterparts from Cairo and Doha on what the document must contain to ensure “it’s a proposal that can get the parties to an ultimate agreement,” said Miller, according to Reuters.
There is no timetable for presenting the new draft agreement, but “we are working expeditiously to try to develop that proposal,” he said, according to the report.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week that more than 90% of the issues have been agreed to by both Israel and Hamas.
“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%, the last 10 meters, those are almost by definition the hardest ground to cover, but we believe that these are fully resolvable,” said Blinken.
“Right now, we are working 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,” the top American diplomat continued.
In Monday’s comments, Miller confirmed the two main obstacles to reaching an agreement: Jerusalem’s insistence on maintaining security control of the buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt, called the Philadelphi Corridor; and specifics in regards to the Palestinian terrorists to be released from Israeli prisons for Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
A Hamas delegation led by senior official Khalil al-Hayya met with mediators in Doha on Sept. 11, including Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel.
The terrorist group currently holds 101 hostages in Gaza of the 251 abducted during the terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
