On Monday, Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in a meeting that both described as constructive. According to Blinken, Netanyahu has approved a plan that the US has put forward for a ceasefire.
Now it's up to Hamas to do the same, Blinken told journalists in Tel Aviv.
When US President Joe Biden spoke at the Democratic Convention in Chicago on Monday, he noted Hamas' objections to the American proposal, while Israel has approved it. Biden said that Hamas "backed away" from the negotiating table.
Hamas, on the other hand, condemns Biden's statement and says it can be seen as a "green light" for Israel to continue the war.
"Israeli pressure"
Hamas representative Osama Hamdan tells Reuters that the proposal that Israel has said yes to is different from the one that was previously on the table.
When Blinken says that the Israelis have accepted and the Israelis say it's an updated proposal, it means that the Americans are being subjected to Israeli pressure and not the other way around, Hamdan tells the news agency.
What the proposal that the US has put forward actually contains is still unknown, but Israel has recently made new demands.
Among other things, they want to keep troops in two places in Gaza, they don't want Hamas to return to northern Gaza, and they want more living hostages released in an early stage, says Anders Persson, Middle East expert at Linnaeus University to TT.
"Last chance"
In addition, Israel wants to maintain a military presence on the border between Gaza and Egypt, which the mediating country Egypt opposes.
The talks about a ceasefire in Gaza are described by Blinken as the "last chance" to reach an agreement. At the same time, attacks continue on both sides of the border between Israel and Gaza.
Together with another terrorist-stamped Islamist movement, Islamic Jihad, Hamas took responsibility for a suicide attack in Tel Aviv, Israel on Sunday and threatened to carry out more similar attacks in Israel. And the Israeli attacks on Gaza are also claiming lives daily.
