Blinken tours Middle East during ongoing four-month Gaza conflict
As part of his fourth trip to the Middle East since the war began, US Secretary of State Blinken spoke in Qatar and urged that Palestinians who fled the violence should be able to “go back to their homes”.
On Sunday, Israel continued to bomb Gaza, where the war with Hamas has lasted for four months. Blinken expressed his sorrow for the “tragedy” of civilian casualties and warned that the conflict could destabilize the whole region.
Two journalists who worked for Al Jazeera, a media outlet based in Qatar, died when their car was hit in Rafah, in the south of Gaza.
They were identified as Mustafa Thuria, a video journalist who also collaborated with AFP and other media outlets, and Hamza Wael Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera’s chief in Gaza who had previously lost his wife and two other children in an Israeli strike.
Al Jazeera denounced the deaths and the “targeting” of journalists, while Blinken called the deaths an “unimaginable tragedy”.
Blinken also said: “And that’s also been the case for… far too many innocent Palestinian men, women and children.”
AFP reporters witnessed air strikes in Khan Yunis, the main city in the south of Gaza, and Rafah near the border with Egypt, where many people who escaped the war have taken shelter.
The war, which started with Hamas’s deadly attacks on Israel in early October, has forced at least 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.4 million people to leave their homes, according to UN data.
Blinken said: “Palestinian civilians must be able to return home as soon as conditions allow. They cannot, they must not be pushed to leave Gaza.”
Some Israeli ministers have recently suggested that Gazans should be “encouraged” to leave and that Jewish settlements should be rebuilt in the territory, but this is not the official position of Israel.
The Israeli army — which says it has “destroyed” Hamas’s military command in northern Gaza — reported killing more “terrorists” in central Gaza, including in a drone strike in the Bureij refugee camp.
A military statement said soldiers had found an underground “weapons production site” in the north of Gaza, which was run by Hamas.
– ‘Not a nightmare, reality’ – The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, which caused about 1,140 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli numbers.
You want me to rewrite the text in a different way, right? Here is my attempt:
The US and the EU label the militants as a “terrorist” group. They have taken about 250 hostages, of whom 132 are still held by them, Israel says. They think at least 24 of the hostages have died.
Israel has hit back with non-stop air strikes and ground attacks that have killed at least 22,835 people, mostly women and children, the Gaza health ministry says.
One resident of Gaza, Nabil Fathi, 51, said: “These three months have felt like 25 years. I hope this is a bad dream, but it is real.
“My home and my son’s home are gone and we have lost 20 family members. I don’t know what will happen to us if I live.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who met with Israeli officials in Jerusalem, said: “It is more and more obvious that the Israeli army has to do more to save civilians in Gaza”.
She said: “The pain of many innocent people cannot continue like this”, and called for “less intense” fighting.
The war in Gaza has also sparked violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, and on Israel’s border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah, a group backed by Iran, have been shooting at each other almost every day.
Hezbollah said on Saturday that it had launched 62 rockets at an Israeli military base, after it accused Israel of a strike in Beirut that killed Hamas’s second-in-command Saleh al-Aruri.
Israel said it had hit Hezbollah “military sites” in return.
Army chief Herzi Halevi said on Sunday: “Hezbollah chose to join this war… and we are making them pay more”.
At Beirut’s main airport, hackers used the screens for departures and arrivals to show a message against Hezbollah, media reports said.
The message said: “Hassan Nasrallah, no one will back you if you start a war”, referring to Hezbollah’s leader. A radical Christian group whose symbol was on the screen said it was not involved.
– Qatar ‘attentive’ to families of hostages – Blinken, who is on a fast-paced Middle East tour, warned of a “deep crisis in the region”.
He said: “This is a conflict that could spread quickly, causing more insecurity and more suffering”.
Qatar, which helped broker a one-week ceasefire that freed dozens of hostages, welcomed relatives of hostages who are still in Gaza over the weekend, said Ruby Chen, the father of Itay Chen, a 19-year-old hostage.
The father said at a press conference in Tel Aviv that Qatari officials they met with “listened to us… and were kind to us”.
Chen said: “Releasing more hostages helps their bigger goal, as they see it, which is making the region more stable”.
Blinken, who arrived in the United Arab Emirates late on Sunday, had earlier talked with King Abdullah II in Jordan.
A statement from the royal palace said Abdullah warned of the “disastrous consequences” of the Israel-Hamas war and of the need to stop “the terrible humanitarian situation” in Gaza.
In the West Bank, violence has risen in the last few months to levels not seen in almost 20 years.
On Sunday, an Israeli strike killed seven Palestinians in Jenin, a city in the north, the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said, and it also said another Palestinian died by Israeli fire in a different incident.
An Israeli border police officer died when a bomb on the road hit her car during a raid on Jenin, and an Israeli civilian died in another shooting near Ramallah, Israeli officials said.
Later, Israeli police said that officers who were dealing with a car-ramming attack at a checkpoint in the West Bank shot a Palestinian girl, and doctors said the three-year-old child was dead.
AFP