US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with the families of the hostages kidnapped in the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, outside of a hotel, in Tel Aviv, Israel, May 1, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/Pool

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, pushing to get more aid into Gaza, while urging Hamas to accept a deal that would halt fighting and bring some hostages home from the enclave.

Israel is the final stop on the top US diplomat’s Middle East tour, his seventh visit to the region which was plunged into conflict on Oct. 7 when Hamas, the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group, attacked southern Israel.

Illustrating the trip’s humanitarian focus, Blinken will visit Ashdod port in the south, which has recently started receiving aid for Gaza. He will ask Israel‘s government to take a set of specific steps to facilitate aid to Gaza, the neighboring Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas.

During a meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem lasting about 2 and 1/2 hours, Blinken noted improvement in delivering aid “and reiterated the importance of accelerating and sustaining that improvement,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

The United States is Israel‘s main diplomatic supporter and weapons supplier. Blinken‘s check-in with Netanyahu on aid comes about a month after US President Joe Biden issued a stark warning that Washington’s policy could shift if Israel didn’t taken certain steps to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The Jewish state had already been allowing a significant amount of humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza since October, and that aid has increased since Biden’s threat.

On Wednesday, Blinken also reiterated the US position that Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist group widely proscribed in the West, was “standing in the way of a ceasefire,” Miller said.

The US diplomat has urged Hamas to accept an “extraordinarily generous” truce deal proposed by Egyptian mediators, which would see 33 hostages released in exchange for a larger number of Palestinian prisoners and a halt to the fighting, with the possibility of further steps towards a comprehensive deal later.

A senior official for Hamas said the group was still studying the proposed deal but accused Blinken of failing to respect both sides and described Israel as the real obstacle.

“Blinken‘s comments contradict reality,” Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.

Blinken‘s trip to Israel comes amid growing speculation that Israel will soon launch a long-promised assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which Israel has described as a last bastion of Hamas.

While facing international calls to hold off on any Rafah offensive due to the potential for civilian casualties, Netanyahu has said Israel is determined to enter Rafah to eliminate Hamas.

Hamas killed 1,200 people and abducted 253 others in its Oct. 7 invasion of Israel. The hostages are mostly Israeli but include some foreign nationals.

In response, Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza aimed at freeing the hostages and incapacitating Hamas to the point that it could no longer pose a major threat to the Israeli people from the neighboring enclave.

The first shipments of aid directly from Jordan to northern Gaza‘s newly opened Erez crossing were to start on Tuesday, goods were also arriving via the port of Ashdod, and a new maritime corridor would be ready in about a week, Blinken said.