John Hudson, Rachel Pannett, Annabelle Timsit, Loveday Morris and Jennifer Hassan
Hamas claimed responsibility for a bombing that shook Tel Aviv on Sunday night as Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived to promote a U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal in Gaza, which he described as potentially a last-ditch chance to restore calm to the Middle East.
“This is a decisive moment — probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a cease-fire, and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security,” Blinken said Monday, alongside Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
Later, after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blinken told reporters that “Israel accepts the bridging proposal,” an effort by mediators in Doha last week to close the remaining gaps between the two sides. “It’s now incumbent upon Hamas to do the same,” he said.
While the Biden administration has said that a deal could be concluded as early as this week, the explosion in Tel Aviv on Sunday night — about an hour after Blinken touched down in the city — underscored the peril of the moment and the risk of escalation. Israelis feared the attack presaged a dark shift in the conflict, sparking memories of the second intifada, the armed Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation between 2000 and 2005 that was marked with bombings in malls, on buses and outside nightclubs.
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