[Source: Reuters]

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in talks on Tuesday to capitalise on the killing of Hamas’ leader by securing the release of the Oct. 7 attack hostages and ending the war in Gaza.

After repeated abortive attempts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Blinken was making his 11th trip to the Middle East since the Gaza war erupted – and the last before a presidential election that could upend U.S. policy.

Blinken was also looking for ways to defuse an escalating spillover conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, where overnight at least 18 people were killed, including four children, and 60 injured by an Israeli airstrike near Beirut’s main state hospital.

Blinken faced an uphill struggle on both fronts.

He spelled out U.S. hopes that the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar – blamed for triggering a year of devastating warfare by planning the deadly militant assault from Gaza on Israeli territory on Oct. 7 last year – will provide a new opportunity for peace.

But there was no mention of a possible ceasefire after a year of war in which Hamas’ military capabilities have been greatly degraded and Gaza largely reduced to rubble, with most of its 2.3 million Palestinians displaced.

Western allies of Israel see Sinwar’s killing last week as a potential breakthrough by providing Netanyahu’s far-right government political cover to assert that its objectives have been achieved in Gaza.

But Israel has maintained that it will not stop fighting until the Palestinian Islamist militant group has been utterly destroyed as a military force and governing entity in Gaza.

For its part, Hamas has refused to free scores of hostages in Gaza seized in its Oct. 7, 2023 raid on Israel without an Israeli pledge to end the war and pull out of the territory.

The State Department said Blinken and Netanyahu also discussed ways of implementing a long moribund 2006 U.N. resolution passed after the last Israel-Hezbollah war that would restore security and calm along the Israeli-Lebanese border and allow civilians on both sides to return to their homes.

But as Blinken was huddled with Israeli leaders, Hezbollah ruled out negotiations while fighting continues with Israel, and it claimed responsibility for a drone attack targeting Netanyahu’s holiday home on Saturday.

In his statement, Netanyahu also said there was a need for a change in the security and political situation in Lebanon that would allow Israelis to return safely to homes that had come under Hezbollah rocket fire.

Hezbollah announced dozens of attacks against Israeli targets on Tuesday, including what it said were Israeli military sites near Haifa and Tel Aviv, suggesting its capabilities have survived Israel’s biggest onslaught in decades of hostilities.

Israel has so far shown no sign of relenting in its Gaza and Lebanon campaigns even after assassinating several leaders of Iran’s allies Hamas and Hezbollah, which lost its powerful secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah in a Sept. 27 airstrike.

Diplomats say Israel aims to lock in a strong position before a new U.S. administration takes over following the Nov. 5 election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump.