Netanyahu Balks at Israel-Hamas Deal Even as Blinken Voices Hope

Israel and the US offered conflicting interpretations of Hamas’s response to a proposal to pause fighting and release dozens of hostages, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeming to reject it out of hand and Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying it opened space for a deal.

“While there are some clear nonstarters in Hamas’s response, we do think it creates space for agreement to be reached and we will work at that relentlessly until we get there,” Blinken told reporters at a briefing Wednesday night in Tel Aviv. “We also see space in what came back to pursue negotiations to see if we can get to an agreement, and that’s what we intend to do.”