By Steve Holland
BUELLTON, California (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden, in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, stressed the urgent need to conclude a Gaza ceasefire-for-hostages deal and pointed to upcoming Cairo talks as crucial, the White House said.
Their call followed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's whirlwind trip to the Middle East that ended on Tuesday without an agreement between Israel and Hamas militants on a truce in the Palestinian enclave.
Negotiators who have struggled for months to conclude a ceasefire deal plan to meet in the coming days in Cairo.
"The president stressed the urgency of bringing the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure and discussed upcoming talks in Cairo to remove any remaining obstacles," a White House statement about the call said.
The statement said Biden and Netanyahu also discussed U.S. efforts to support Israel "against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, to include ongoing defensive U.S. military deployments."
Iran has vowed retaliation over the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, which it blamed on Israel. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it was behind the killing.
The United States has ordered a guided missile submarine be deployed to the Middle East and ordered the Abraham Lincoln strike group to accelerate its deployment to the region to be on hand to bolster Israel's defense.
Blinken and mediators from Egypt and Qatar have pinned their hopes on a U.S. "bridging proposal" aimed at narrowing the gaps between the two sides in the 10-month-old Gaza war.
"President Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to discuss the ceasefire and hostage release deal and diplomatic efforts to de-escalate regional tensions," a White House statement said earlier.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who on Thursday in Chicago will formally accept the nomination as the Democrats' presidential candidate for the Nov. 5 election, also joined the call.
Biden, who is vacationing at an 8,000-acre ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley of California, had been expected to press Netanyahu to soften a new Israeli demand that it be allowed to keep forces along a land corridor between Egypt and Gaza, a U.S. official said before the call.
Netanyahu's office on Wednesday denied an Israeli television report that the country had agreed to withdraw its troops from the so-called Philadelphi corridor, a narrow 14.5-km-long (nine-mile-long) stretch of land along the coastal enclave's southern border with Egypt.
Getting a Gaza ceasefire deal is a major priority for Biden. A senior U.S. official on Friday described the talks as close to a deal but a final agreement has been agonizingly elusive.
In talks to halt fighting in the 10-month-old war, Hamas is seeking a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, including the Philadelphi corridor.
Israel wants to retain control of the corridor, which it captured in late May, after destroying dozens of tunnels beneath it that it says had served to smuggle in weapons to Gaza's militant groups.
(This story has been refiled to fix a typo in paragraph 6)