As delegates assembled in Chicago for the start of the Democratic National Convention on August 19, something surreal was happening 6,000 miles away in Israel. In Tel Aviv, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, declared that Israel had accepted a “bridging proposal” to move towards a ceasefire. He insisted that it was now up to Gaza’s Hamas leadership to say yes.
Yet even as he spoke, officials from both the Israeli government and Hamas said there had been no movement in the peace talks in Qatar.
This is far from surprising, given that just three weeks before, Hamas’s chief negotiator and political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, had been assassinated in Tehran, almost certainly by Israel. Then, when Israel’s negotiators told their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on August 18 that they needed some room to manoeuvre – and that after months of negotiations, a deal based on his positions could not be agreed – he reportedly refused to budge.
