00:00The U.S.'s top diplomat has left the Middle East with no ceasefire in hand.
00:04After visits to Israel, Egypt and Qatar, Anthony Blinken warned the time is off the essence.
00:11While Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted a proposal to bridge gaps,
00:14the focus now shifting to mediators to do everything possible to get Hamas
00:19on board. This, as talks are due to resume in Cairo.
00:22For more on this story, we can bring in our Chief Foreign Editor Rob Parsons.
00:26Rob, good afternoon. Yes, Anthony Blinken may have left empty-handed,
00:30but the game isn't over, is it?
00:33Not by a long way. First of all, the talks continue, as you point out,
00:37in Qatar, as they have been for some time. The problem, though, is that Anthony Blinken went
00:41to the Middle East in the hope of pushing Hamas and Israel to take the final step to get that
00:49ceasefire agreement into place. And all the talk was of this bridging agreement, the details of
00:54which we don't really know. But it is meant to bring the two sides closer together on that
01:01ceasefire plan that was presented by Joe Biden, but allegedly originating from the Israeli side,
01:09although Israel prevaricated over whether it was really involved in that or not.
01:15And according to Anthony Blinken, some progress was made. He said that the Israelis accepted the
01:21bridging plan. And then we had Benjamin Netanyahu, according to an Israeli media source, saying that
01:26he had spoken clearly to Anthony Blinken, and Blinken had accepted his position, which was
01:32that Israel would retain control over key strategic, military and political assets, including,
01:39one is led to understand, the Philadelphia Corridor, which is the one that runs along
01:43the border between Gaza and Egypt, south of the Gaza Strip, and the Netzarim Corridor,
01:49which bisects the Gaza Strip, and that Israel would check people crossing from the south into
01:56the north to ensure that they weren't carrying weapons. That's absolutely unacceptable to
02:01Hamas and is not part of the original deal. Anthony Blinken has since made clear that
02:07Netanyahu's comments, if indeed he did make them to the Israeli outlet, are not constructive,
02:14and they're all maximalist, and made clear he's pretty irritated by them. Hamas, from its point
02:21of view, is saying that the bridging agreement still veers too close to Israel. So despite what
02:27the Americans and other mediators are saying, not an awful lot of progress seems to have been made
02:32at this stage. And, Rob, all this is happening while Iran and Hezbollah sit on their hands and
02:38mull their response to the recent targeting of Hezbollah for each general in Lebanon and Iran
02:44for the killing of Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh over in Tehran. Yes, that's absolutely right. Iran has
02:50said that it reserves the right to take military action against Israel for the killing of Ismail
02:58Haniyeh in Tehran the day after the inauguration of the new Iranian president. It's not saying how
03:06it's going to strike or when it's going to strike. And an enormous amount of diplomatic effort has
03:13been made, put into preventing Iran going ahead with that. European heads of state, the Americans
03:19have been pressing. Qatar has been in negotiations, keeping Iran informed of how the mediation efforts
03:28are going on in Qatar between Hamas and Israel. And so far, Iran has not taken the fateful step.
03:35One has to assume that part of the reason for that is Iran does not want to have to be forced
03:41into taking that fatal step because it knows there will be consequences. Even though it has to save
03:46face on some level. Exactly. It has to save face. And what it's, one imagines what it's hoping is
03:52that a deal will be struck on Gaza, which it can say, OK, you know, on a say, the most important
03:58is we've got a peace deal in the Middle East and it can back away, back away from the need for
04:05retaliation against Israel in the hope that it will be gradually forgotten. But at the moment,
04:10the problem for Iran is that peace deal is still elusive. Yeah, we'll see if Tehran manages to
04:18pressure Hamas to accepting the deal or we'll see. Thank you very much for that, Rob Parsons.
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