US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed frustration on Wednesday that Hamas has submitted “numerous changes” to a US-backed proposal for a ceasefire and the release of hostages in Gaza – a development that added further casts doubt on the prospects of securing the deal quickly. Hope will bring a “permanent end” to the war.
“Some changes are workable. Some are not,” Blinken said at a news conference in Doha, describing some of these changes as “going beyond the positions Hamas had previously taken.”
Blinken, unlike an Israeli official who previously spoke to CNN, did not go so far as to describe Hamas’ response as a rejection of the proposal, saying he believed the “rifts” are “bridgeable.” Still, the top US diplomat made it clear that he was annoyed by both Hamas’s proposed changes and the time it took to respond – twelve days. He did not go into specific details about the changes, but he continued to place sole blame for the deal’s collapse — and the prolongation of the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza — on the US-designated terrorist group, not Israel .
“Israel accepted the proposal as it was,” he reiterated, despite repeated public statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that appeared to cast doubt on his approval of the proposal.
“Hamas could have answered with a single word: yes,” he said.
“At some point in a negotiation – and this has been going back and forth for a long time – you get to a point where if one side continues to change its demands, including making demands and pushing for changes for things it already had accepted, you have to wonder whether they are acting in good faith or not,” Blinken said in reference to Hamas.
“It is time for the negotiations to stop and for a ceasefire to begin. It’s that simple,” he said.
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Wednesday described “many” of Hamas’s proposed changes as “minor and not unexpected,” but said that “others differ more substantively from what was outlined in the U.N. Security Council resolution.”
That resolution, adopted by the UN body on Monday, contained the three sentences for the ceasefire and the release of hostages. The first phase would involve “an immediate, full and complete ceasefire” with the release of hostages and “withdrawal of Israeli forces from the populated areas in Gaza.” In phase two, “with the agreement of the parties,” there would be “a permanent end to hostilities in exchange for the release of all other hostages remaining in Gaza and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.” ” Phase three would see “the beginning of a major multi-year reconstruction plan for Gaza and the return of the remains of all deceased hostages remaining in Gaza to their families.”
A diplomatic source told CNN that Hamas’ response “included amendments to the Israeli proposal, including a timeline for a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.”
A senior US government official told CNN that “the goalposts are moving” in Hamas’ response, and that the group is “now pushing for even more specificity than before.”
The official had previously told CNN that what was on the table was “pretty thin once you get past that initial phase.”
“Hamas’ requests would ultimately undermine the phased nature of the proposal on which the agreement rests,” the senior government official said on Wednesday. “It will be difficult to get Israel to agree to the automatism that the ceasefire will become permanent.”
While much of Blinken’s trip to Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Qatar focused on increasing pressure on Hamas to accept the proposal for an immediate ceasefire, it was also focused on developing plans in case there was a ceasefire.
It is “critical” to move from an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza “to a lasting end” to the war, Blinken said Wednesday in some of his most outspoken remarks yet calling for an end to the eight-month conflict.
“In the coming weeks we will propose key elements of the ‘day after’ plan, including concrete ideas for governance, security and reconstruction,” the top US diplomat said, without giving further details.
Yet any move on any of these aspects is dependent on an end to the fighting in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of more than 37,000 Palestinians and left the Gaza Strip in what aid officials have described as an “unprecedented” humanitarian catastrophe.
“In the coming days, we will continue to urgently urge our partners, with Qatar and with Egypt, to try to close this deal,” Blinken said Wednesday as he wrapped up his eighth round of shuttle diplomacy since the election. October 7 Hamas attack.
Hamas submitted its response to the multi-phase proposal for a ceasefire and the release of hostages to mediators on Tuesday. According to a senior State Department official, Blinken, who was in Amman at the time, sent two of the senior staff members traveling with him to get Hamas’ response from Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, who was also in the Jordanian was the capital.
Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, described their response as “responsible, serious and positive.”
CNN’s Becky Anderson, Hamdi Alkhshali and Benjamin Brown contributed to this report.
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