U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken re­turned to the Mid­dle East on Mon­day as a pro­posed Is­rael-Hamas cease-fire deal hangs in the bal­ance af­ter the dra­mat­ic res­cue of four Is­raeli hostages held in Gaza in a ma­jor mil­i­tary raid and tur­moil in Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu’s gov­ern­ment.

With no firm pub­lic re­sponse yet from Hamas or Is­rael to the pro­pos­al they re­ceived 10 days ago, Blinken start­ed his eighth vis­it to the re­gion since the con­flict be­gan in Oc­to­ber by meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Ab­del Fat­tah el-Sis­si of Egypt, a key me­di­a­tor with Hamas.

Blinken once again called on Hamas to ac­cept the plan, which he said has wide in­ter­na­tion­al sup­port. “If you want a cease-fire, press Hamas to say ‘yes,’” he told re­porters be­fore leav­ing Cairo on the trip that will take him to Is­rael, Jor­dan and Qatar. Blinken said Is­rael has ac­cept­ed the pro­pos­al, though Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu has not said so di­rect­ly.

He said the plan on the ta­ble is the “sin­gle best way” to get to a cease-fire, re­lease the re­main­ing hostages and im­prove re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

While Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, Blinken and oth­er U.S. of­fi­cials have praised the hostage res­cue, the op­er­a­tion re­sult­ed in the deaths of a large num­ber of Pales­tin­ian civil­ians and may com­pli­cate the cease-fire push by em­bold­en­ing Is­rael and hard­en­ing Hamas’ re­solve to car­ry on fight­ing in the war it ini­ti­at­ed with its Oct. 7 at­tack in­to Is­rael.

“It’s hard to say how Hamas will process this par­tic­u­lar op­er­a­tion and what it will do to its de­ter­mi­na­tion about whether it will say yes or not,” Biden’s na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er, Jake Sul­li­van, said Sun­day. “We are hope­ful that with enough of a cho­rus, the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty all speak­ing with one voice, Hamas will get to the right an­swer,” Sul­li­van told ABC’s “This Week.”

In his talks with el-Sis­si, Blinken un­der­scored that Hamas should ac­cept it “with­out de­lay,” spokesper­son Matthew Miller said. They al­so dis­cussed plans for post-con­flict gov­er­nance and re­con­struc­tion in Gaza, he said.

The three-phase plan calls for the re­lease of more hostages and a tem­po­rary pause in hos­til­i­ties that will last as long as it takes to ne­go­ti­ate the sec­ond phase, which aims to bring the re­lease of all hostages, a “full with­draw­al of Is­raeli forces from Gaza” and “a per­ma­nent end to hos­til­i­ties,” ac­cord­ing to an Amer­i­can-draft­ed res­o­lu­tion put be­fore the U.N. Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. The third phase calls for re­con­struc­tion in Gaza.

The Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil is to vote Mon­day af­ter­noon on the res­o­lu­tion, which wel­comes the pro­pos­al and urges Hamas to ac­cept it.

But Hamas may not be the on­ly ob­sta­cle.

Al­though the deal has been de­scribed as an Is­raeli ini­tia­tive and thou­sands of Is­raelis have demon­strat­ed in sup­port of it, Ne­tanyahu has ex­pressed skep­ti­cism, say­ing what has been pre­sent­ed pub­licly is not ac­cu­rate and that Is­rael is still com­mit­ted to de­stroy­ing Hamas.

Ne­tanyahu’s far-right al­lies have threat­ened to col­lapse his gov­ern­ment if he im­ple­ments the plan. Ben­ny Gantz, a pop­u­lar cen­trist, re­signed on Sun­day from the three-mem­ber War Cab­i­net af­ter say­ing he would if the prime min­is­ter did not for­mu­late a new plan for post­war Gaza. In the af­ter­math of the hostage res­cue, Ne­tanyahu had urged him not to step down.

Blinken has met with Ne­tanyahu, De­fense Min­is­ter Yoav Gal­lant, Gantz and Is­raeli op­po­si­tion leader Yair Lapid on near­ly all his pre­vi­ous trips to Is­rael. Of­fi­cials said Blinken is ex­pect­ed to meet with Gantz again on Tues­day.

U.S. State De­part­ment spokesman Matthew Miller said Fri­day that Blinken would use the trip to “dis­cuss how the cease-fire pro­pos­al would ben­e­fit both Is­raelis and Pales­tini­ans.”

Miller said the deal would not on­ly al­le­vi­ate the hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Gaza but al­so set the stage for a re­duc­tion in ten­sion along the Is­rael-Lebanon bor­der and cre­ate con­di­tions for broad­er Is­raeli in­te­gra­tion with its Arab neigh­bours, strength­en­ing Is­rael’s long-term se­cu­ri­ty.

De­spite Blinken’s rough­ly once-a-month vis­its to the re­gion since the war be­gan, the con­flict has ground on with more than 37,120 Pales­tini­ans killed, ac­cord­ing to the Gaza Health Min­istry, which does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its counts. Hamas and oth­er mil­i­tants killed some 1,200 peo­ple in the Oct. 7 at­tack, most­ly civil­ians, and took around 250 peo­ple hostage.

The war has se­vere­ly hin­dered the flow of food, med­i­cine and oth­er sup­plies to Pales­tini­ans, who are fac­ing wide­spread hunger. U.N. agen­cies say more than 1 mil­lion peo­ple in Gaza could ex­pe­ri­ence the high­est lev­el of star­va­tion by mid-Ju­ly.

In Jor­dan, Blinken will take part in an emer­gency in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence on im­prov­ing the flow of aid to Gaza. —CAIRO (AP)

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Sto­ry by MATTHEW LEE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press