Biden discusses Gaza ceasefire efforts with Netanyahu

WASHINGTON:

US President Joe Biden spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday about ways to advance a potential Gaza ceasefire and hostages deal, the White House said.

The call followed US 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.

Blinken and mediators from Egypt and Qatar have pinned their hopes on a US. "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.

Vice President Kamala Harris will on Thursday in Chicago formally accept the nomination as the Democrats' presidential candidate for the Nov. 5 election, also joined the call.

The White House was to provide further details of the call later in the day.

Biden 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 US official said before the call.

Biden is on a family vacation in the Santa Ynez Valley of California, staying on an 8,000-acre ranch.

Getting a Gaza ceasefire deal is a major priority for Biden. A senior US 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 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.

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.