Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will visit Israel next week, an Israeli official said on Friday, as talks on a cease-fire deal have stalled and tensions have risen between Israel and the United States over the treatment of civilians in the war.
The Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said talks with Mr. Blinken would center on the remaining hostages held in Gaza and an impending Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Mr. Blinken last visited Israel in March, when he warned that its plans to invade Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, would pose severe risks to the population. Since then, the Biden administration has continued to raise concerns about the planned incursion, saying it should not be carried out without a credible plan to protect civilians.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has vowed to press ahead with the invasion, saying it is necessary to eliminate Hamas battalions in the city.
Mr. Blinken’s visit would come as international mediators have failed to broker a temporary cease-fire that would give Palestinians some respite from Israel’s bombardment and allow for the release of hostages abducted in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
The United States has proposed a deal through Egyptian and Qatari intermediaries in which Hamas would release 40 of the most vulnerable hostages in exchange for a six-week truce and the release of hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
A senior Biden administration official who briefed reporters on Thursday on the condition of anonymity under official ground rules blamed Hamas solely for blocking the deal. The official said that while Israel had signaled it would accept those terms, the response from Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader hiding underground in Gaza, had been “totally nonconstructive.”
Hamas has since signaled that it was not completely rejecting the deal and was willing to return to talks again, the official said, adding that the United States and its partners would test that signaling in coming days.
With more than 34,000 people killed in Gaza amid Israeli strikes, according to the Gazan Health Ministry, Palestinians in the territory were contending with yet another misery this week — a blast of extreme heat that pushed temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday.
The heat, combined with a lack of clean water, has made life unbearable in the tents that many Gazans are using for shelter and has intensified worries about the spread of diseases.
“My children were stung by insects and mosquitoes because there is no sanitation around, and sewage is leaking almost everywhere,” said Mohammed Abu Hatab, a father of four, including a 7-month-old child, who added that it was so hot that he had to dress his children only in their underwear.
“The tent, the heat wave and the horror of this war are all a nightmare,” Mr. Abu Hatab, 33, said. “How can my children live healthily and safely?”
In an effort to bring more food, water and medicine into Gaza, U.S. Army engineers on Thursday began constructing a floating pier and causeway off the territory’s coast, Defense Department officials said. The maritime project is expected to be completed early next month.
But aid workers say, and defense officials have acknowledged, that shipments by sea are not an adequate substitute for land convoys, which are much more efficient. Such convoys fell sharply when the war began and have only partly recovered. The World Food Program said this week that a famine in Gaza could begin in six weeks.
While Israel remains determined to eliminate Hamas in Gaza, its military is also battling Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful regional proxy, in a conflict that has caused a growing number of civilian casualties on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border.
On Friday, the Israeli military said that an Israeli man was killed while carrying out “infrastructure work” on Thursday, when two anti-tank missiles from Lebanon struck the area of Har Dov in northern Israel. Also known as Shebaa Farms, the area is claimed by Lebanon but occupied by Israel, and it has long been a crucible for violence.
Hezbollah described the overnight attack as an “ambush” and claimed that two vehicles had been destroyed in a combined missile, artillery and rocket assault on an Israeli military base in the area. The Israeli military’s statement did not say whether a base had been hit.
Israeli forces responded by striking Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon, among them a weapon storage center and military compound, according to the military. Lebanese state media reported on Friday that several towns had been targeted by heavy Israeli bombardment, damaging dozens of houses. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, the heaviest between the two sides in nearly two decades, has shown no sign of subsiding.
In Israel, 19 soldiers and civilians have been killed in the recent violence, which began after Hezbollah launched rockets into northern Israel in support of the Oct. 7 attack led by Hamas, also supported by Iran. Since the assault, more than 70 civilians have been killed in Lebanon, along with about 270 Hezbollah fighters, the group has said, a figure that exceeds its losses in a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Reporting was contributed by Bilal Shbair, Hiba Yazbek, Helene Cooper, Michael Crowley and Michael Levenson.