US top diplomat Antony Blinken is once again in the Middle East as pressure to close a deal to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza and end fighting in the territory grows.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Tel Aviv to ratchet up the pressure to achieve a cease-fire deal in Gaza and return hostages held by the Palestinian militant group Hamas to Israel.

During his ninth trip since the conflict began, Blinken will meet Monday with senior Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a senior State Department official said. He will then travel to Egypt where truce talks will resume in the coming days.

A US official traveling with Blinken told AFP news agency on condition of anonymity that “the feeling is… that various sticking points that existed before are bridgeable, and that work’s going to continue.”

The mediating countries — Qatar, the United States and Egypt — have so far failed to reach a deal in months of on-off negotiations.

Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting Sunday there are areas where Israel can be flexible and unspecified areas where it won’t be.

“We are conducting negotiations and not a scenario in which we just give and give,” he said.

Hamas has cast doubt on whether an agreement is near, saying the latest proposal diverged significantly from a previous iteration it had accepted in principle.

Israel’s demands for a lasting military presence along the Gaza-Egypt border is one of the issues Hamas has rejected.