Israel kills top Palestinian militant as Gaza truce talks stumble

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00:00Today Israel has confirmed it killed a senior commander of the Palestinian

00:05movement Fatah in the south of Lebanon. Halil Magda was hit by a missile in his

00:11car in the southern city of Sidon. Israel had accused him of orchestrating attacks

00:16in the West Bank. Now the attack today marks the first reported strike since

00:22October the 7th on a senior member of Fatah, that is the movement led by the

00:27Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Well the news today comes as the top

00:33American diplomat Antony Blinken has left the Middle East with no ceasefire

00:37deal agreed in the war in Gaza. Our Jerusalem correspondent Ilyas Makla has

00:42more for us now on Blinken's message as the talks wrapped up. The ball is in the

00:50mediators court because what Antony Blinken said is I guess what his

00:53repeated message Jerusalem Cairo and Qatar this is the last chance and it's

00:58the last chance from a humanitarian point of view. He's looking at the

01:02Israeli civilians held in Gaza actually all the Israelis held in Gaza whether

01:07they were soldiers or civilians and the suffering of Palestinian civilians in

01:12the Gaza Strip during this war and he says for them it's the last chance.

01:16Strangely you know that message resonates more you could say outside of

01:21this region than perhaps it does here. One of the things that's being discussed

01:25in this bridging proposal is a suggestion from Israel that it would

01:31like that there's a controversial one a controversial area and that's the border

01:36between Gaza and Egypt and it's the suggestion that Israel some Israeli

01:40military would stay there you know where would they stay how many would there be

01:45what would happen with the Rafah border crossing there's an American proposal

01:49for a joint Palestinian and EU group to police that crossing but it won't be

01:55Hamas what will Hamas have to say about that. So all these issues are still in

02:00play but we're seeing very pessimistic reports from Israeli officials and

02:03American officials saying that they don't see an agreement coming to fruition

02:08soon. The only hope is this strange game that's played here which is the blame

02:13game the result doesn't matter as long as you can blame the other side so

02:18perhaps that will actually be a feature or function in Hamas Hamas's thinking

02:22and they might agree to keep going they haven't dismissed it entirely even

02:28though they've been briefing against it right-wing Israeli leaders have been

02:31briefing against this deal and we are yet to see if if the worldwide desire

02:37for a ceasefire I can put it like that we see what's happening in Washington

02:40right now the worldwide desire for a ceasefire might actually transfer to the

02:45region too. That was Iris Mackler speaking to us from Jerusalem

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