Blinken ‘lacks neutrality, even-handedness’: Hamas
Hamas official Taher al-Nunu has accused US Secretary of State Antony Blinken of bias for blaming the Palestinian group for the failure to reach an agreement, saying the top US diplomat has been acting like he is Israel’s foreign minister since the start of the war.
“He lacks neutrality. He lacks even-handedness. He operates with double standards. He is trying to portray the [Palestinian] resistance as if it is the party obstructing the deal,” al-Nunu told Al Jazeera.
He said Hamas accepted the proposal presented by Qatar and Egypt on May 6 as it was, and it was Israel that added amendments to it. Hamas’s response on Tuesday represented counter-revisions to some of the Israeli changes, al-Nunu said.
He stressed that Hamas agrees to the principles of the United Nations Security Council resolution that backed the deal, outlining four elements that the Palestinian group is seeking: permanent ceasefire, withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, reconstruction of the territory and “serious” prisoner exchange.
According to al-Nunu, Hamas’s response aimed to deliver a single agreement with interconnected stages – to ensure that Israel would not renege on the deal and resume the war after the first phase, which would see the release of some of its captives in Gaza.
Asked whether Hamas would be flexible about demands that Blinken labelled “not workable”, al-Nunu said it is “normal” for parties engaged in negotiations to accept or reject amendments to a proposal.
“The ball is in Israel’s court, which is what the US administration is trying to return to us. Netanyahu is the one responsible so far for obstruction by not agreeing to what we sent to the mediators,” he added.
Hamas says it has not heard any Israeli response regarding ceasefire proposal
Hamas says in a statement it has shown “full positivity” in efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement with Israel. The Palestinian group also urged the US, Israel’s biggest ally, to pressure Israel to accept a deal leading to a permanent ceasefire in the enclave.
Hamas said that while US officials have said Israel has accepted a ceasefire proposal outlined by President Joe Biden on May 31, “we have not heard any Israeli official confirm this acceptance”.
Confusion abounds as US continuing to say Israel accepts ceasefire proposal
The US government has continued to paint the Israeli government as accepting Biden’s three-phase plan. This is not necessarily so, given the fact that a number of government members in Israel have threatened to resign should the plan be adopted and put in place.
So certainly, there’s a degree of confusion about this, whereas, initially, the plan was actually posted as that coming from the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This also apparently does not appear to be the case.
So the interests of reaching a resolution are not really served by the US continuing to insist that one of the parties to the negotiations has accepted the peace plan. This clearly is not the case, and this may well continue to confuse the issue.
It's the same tactic the US has been employing since the start of the genocide. Deflection, disinformation, confusion, propaganda, stalling for time. Yet now it's also against Biden's interests.
