As the US seeks to push a Gaza truce and hostage agreement mediated by Egypt and Qatar, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Cairo on Tuesday to meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.
Shortly after dawn, the senior U.S. ambassador left Riyadh for what is expected to be a long day of visiting Egypt and Qatar before taking a plane to Israel to talk about preparations for Gaza after the war, discussions over hostages, and the possibility of normalising relations between Arab nations and Israel.
Blinken is making his fifth trip to the area since October as the US continues its campaign of retaliation against a group affiliated with Iran that assaulted and murdered US Marines in a military outpost in Jordan last month.
Washington believes that progress on other issues, like the governance of post-war Gaza, a route to Palestinian statehood, and an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia to normalise their relationship, depend on a potential truce to release the last hostages that Hamas kidnapped on October 7 and to halt hostilities in Gaza.
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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