Hamas has not asked for changes, nor made new proposals compared to the plan developed by the Biden administration for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. The statement from a senior Hamas official in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, came in the evening.
During a press conference in Doha, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken instead stated that Hamas had suggested numerous changes, some of which were impracticable, to the ceasefire proposal for Gaza developed by Washington. Hamas’ denial arrived shortly after.
Hamas then raises the bar. US Secretary of State Antony ”Blinken confirmed that he is part of the problem, not the solution,” Hamdan said. ”The US Administration is playing into Israel’s hands, helping it not to commit to a permanent ceasefire agreement,” he added.
Blinken
“One of our goals is to prevent this conflict in Gaza from spreading into the region. We have been committed to this from day one,” Blinken said again, referring to the risk of escalation between Israel and Hezbollah to the north, to “have no doubts about the fact that the best way to strengthen a diplomatic solution in the north is a resolution of the conflict in Gaza.”
“By coming to a ceasefire, that will take a tremendous amount of pressure off the system,” the US secretary of state added, explaining that it “will take away a justification that Hezbollah provides for the attacks that it is conducting.” “And I think it opens the way towards the possibility of actually resolving it diplomatically, that’s what we’re determined to do,” he said again.
“We don’t want to see an escalation, and I think you can say that really no one wants to start a war, have an escalation,” Blinken said again in reference to the situation on Israel’s northern border where “about 60,000 Israelis had to leave their homes due to missile launches and threats from Hezbollah.”
These Israelis “must be able to return home, there are also people from southern Lebanon who must be able to return home”, continued the US Secretary of State, explaining that “most of the parties involved believe that we can and must, ideally, be a diplomatic resolution of differences that can ignite conflict.”
“And in particular a solution that brings about the necessary conditions for people to return to their homes and believe that they can live safely in their own homes,” he added. “So what I’ve heard from all parties involved, and from others who are working on this, is that there is a strong preference for a diplomatic solution,” Blinken concluded.
Hezbollah: “We will intensify attacks against Israel”
“We will strengthen our operations, they will intensify, in response. Our enemy will know who the sons of Lebanon’s resistance are.” This is the threat that has arrived in the meantime from the head of Hezbollah’s executive council, Hashem Safieddine, with a message addressed to Israel. Hundreds of Hezbollah supporters and militants gathered on the southern outskirts of Beirut to bid farewell to Hezbollah military commander Taleb Abdullah, killed yesterday in an Israeli raid in southern Lebanon. According to Israeli media, more than 170 rockets were fired from Lebanon towards northern Israel yesterday.
Hezbollah threatens to “intensify the intensity, strength, quantity and quality of its operations”. “If the enemy screams and cries for what happened in northern Palestine – he said – let him prepare to cry and suffer”.
According to statements broadcast by Al Manar, a Lebanese TV channel linked to Hezbollah, Safieddine added that Israel “is wrong” if it thinks that killing the group’s fighters will weaken Hezbollah’s position. “If the enemy’s message is that he is trying to undermine our resolve so that we will back down,” she said, “he must know that our response is final and inevitable.”
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