Photo: Reuters U.S. President Joe Biden, in a phone
call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, stressed the
urgent need to conclude a Gaza ceasefire-for-hostages deal and pointed to
upcoming Cairo talks as crucial, the White House said.
Their call followed U.S. Secretary
of State Antony Blinken's whirlwind trip to the Middle East that ended on
Tuesday without an agreement between Israel and Hamas militants on a truce in
the Palestinian enclave.
Negotiators who have struggled for
months to conclude a ceasefire deal plan to meet in the coming days in Cairo.
"The president stressed the
urgency of bringing the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure and
discussed upcoming talks in Cairo to remove any remaining obstacles," a
White House statement about the call said.
The statement said Biden and
Netanyahu also discussed U.S. efforts to support Israel "against all
threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and
the Houthis, to include ongoing defensive U.S. military deployments."
Iran has vowed retaliation over the
killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, which it blamed on
Israel. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it was behind the killing.
The United States has ordered a guided
missile submarine be deployed to the Middle East and ordered
the Abraham Lincoln strike group to accelerate its deployment to the region to
be on hand to bolster Israel's defense.
Blinken and mediators from Egypt and
Qatar have pinned their hopes on a U.S. "bridging proposal" aimed at
narrowing the gaps between the two sides in the 10-month-old Gaza war.
"President Biden spoke with
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to discuss the ceasefire and
hostage release deal and diplomatic efforts to de-escalate regional
tensions," a White House statement said earlier.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who on
Thursday in Chicago will formally accept the nomination as the Democrats'
presidential candidate for the Nov. 5 election, also joined the call.
Biden, who is vacationing at an
8,000-acre ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley of California, had been expected to
press Netanyahu to soften a new Israeli demand that it be allowed to keep
forces along a land corridor between Egypt and Gaza, a U.S. official said
before the call.
Netanyahu's office on Wednesday
denied an Israeli television report that the country had agreed to withdraw its
troops from the so-called Philadelphi corridor, a narrow 14.5-km-long
(nine-mile-long) stretch of land along the coastal enclave's southern border
with Egypt.
Getting a Gaza ceasefire deal is a
major priority for Biden. A senior U.S. official on Friday described the talks
as close to a deal but a final agreement has been agonizingly elusive.
In talks to halt
fighting in the 10-month-old war, Hamas is seeking a complete
Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, including the Philadelphi corridor.
Israel wants to retain control of
the corridor, which it captured in late May, after destroying dozens of tunnels
beneath it that it says had served to smuggle in weapons to Gaza's militant
groups.
