Israel kills top Palestinian militant as Gaza truce talks stumble
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00:00Today Israel has confirmed it killed a senior commander of the Palestinian
00:05movement Fatah in the south of Lebanon. Halil Magda was hit by a missile in his
00:11car in the southern city of Sidon. Israel had accused him of orchestrating attacks
00:16in the West Bank. Now the attack today marks the first reported strike since
00:22October the 7th on a senior member of Fatah, that is the movement led by the
00:27Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Well the news today comes as the top
00:33American diplomat Antony Blinken has left the Middle East with no ceasefire
00:37deal agreed in the war in Gaza. Our Jerusalem correspondent Ilyas Makla has
00:42more for us now on Blinken's message as the talks wrapped up. The ball is in the
00:50mediators court because what Antony Blinken said is I guess what his
00:53repeated message Jerusalem Cairo and Qatar this is the last chance and it's
00:58the last chance from a humanitarian point of view. He's looking at the
01:02Israeli civilians held in Gaza actually all the Israelis held in Gaza whether
01:07they were soldiers or civilians and the suffering of Palestinian civilians in
01:12the Gaza Strip during this war and he says for them it's the last chance.
01:16Strangely you know that message resonates more you could say outside of
01:21this region than perhaps it does here. One of the things that's being discussed
01:25in this bridging proposal is a suggestion from Israel that it would
01:31like that there's a controversial one a controversial area and that's the border
01:36between Gaza and Egypt and it's the suggestion that Israel some Israeli
01:40military would stay there you know where would they stay how many would there be
01:45what would happen with the Rafah border crossing there's an American proposal
01:49for a joint Palestinian and EU group to police that crossing but it won't be
01:55Hamas what will Hamas have to say about that. So all these issues are still in
02:00play but we're seeing very pessimistic reports from Israeli officials and
02:03American officials saying that they don't see an agreement coming to fruition
02:08soon. The only hope is this strange game that's played here which is the blame
02:13game the result doesn't matter as long as you can blame the other side so
02:18perhaps that will actually be a feature or function in Hamas Hamas's thinking
02:22and they might agree to keep going they haven't dismissed it entirely even
02:28though they've been briefing against it right-wing Israeli leaders have been
02:31briefing against this deal and we are yet to see if if the worldwide desire
02:37for a ceasefire I can put it like that we see what's happening in Washington
02:40right now the worldwide desire for a ceasefire might actually transfer to the
02:45region too. That was Iris Mackler speaking to us from Jerusalem