RAMALLAH (AFP): Israel kept bombing Gaza on Wednesday as US top diplomat Antony Blinken met the head of the Palestinian Authority, which Washington hopes could govern the coastal territory after the war ends.
As the US secretary of state arrived under tight security in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, protesters held up signs that read “Stop the genocide”, “Free Palestine” and “Blinken out”.
Blinken then met Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who was later set to discuss a “push for an immediate cease-fire” in talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in the Red Sea port city of Aqaba.
The bloodiest ever Gaza war started by the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel has raged on for more than three months and killed over 23,000 people in the Hamas-run territory, according to its health ministry.
Global concern has flared over the spiralling humanitarian crisis, and Blinken- while voicing continued US political and military support for top regional ally Israel — has urged steps to reduce the surging civilian death toll.
Dire shortages brought by an Israeli siege mean the “daily toll on civilians in Gaza, particularly children, is far too high,” Blinken said on Tuesday at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Amid the latest round of US crisis diplomacy, the Gaza war raged on unabated. The Israeli army said it had killed dozens of “terrorists” and hit another 150 targets in Gaza’s central Maghazi and southern Khan Yunis areas.
Troops had found 15 tunnel shafts as well as rocket launchers, missiles, drones and explosives in Al-Maghazi and destroyed machinery for producing the rockets that have been fired at Israel, the army said.
The Gaza health ministry said 70 people were killed and 130 wounded in overnight attacks on the territory of 2.4 million where the United Nations says most people are displaced and at risk of disease and hunger.
The war started when Hamas launched its unprecedented October 7 attack, which resulted in about 1,140 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also took around 250 hostages, of whom Israel says 132 remain in Gaza including at least 25 believed to have been killed.
Israel has responded with a relentless military campaign that has killed at least 23,210 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The Israeli army says 186 of its soldiers have been killed inside Gaza.
The United Nations estimates 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced inside the besieged territory that had already endured years of blockade and poverty before the war.
One of them, Hassan Kaskin 55, told AFP: “We have lost our money, our houses, our jobs. We are losing our youths as well.
“We’ve sacrificed our children for our homeland.”
Blinken is on his fourth tour of the Middle East since the outbreak of the war, with earlier stops in Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Washington has floated a post-war scenario in which a reformed Palestinian Authority governs Gaza as well as towns and cities in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Blinken argued Tuesday that “Israel must be a partner to Palestinian leaders who are willing to lead their people in living side by side in peace with Israel as neighbors”.
Amid a flare-up of violence in the West Bank, Blinken also said that “extremist settler violence carried out with impunity, settlement expansion, demolitions, evictions all make it harder, not easier, for Israel to achieve lasting peace and security.”
He added that “the Palestinian Authority also has a responsibility to reform itself, to improve its governance”.
Netanyahu, who leads what is widely seen as the most right-wing government in Israeli history, has shown no interest in reviving negotiations toward a Palestinian state.
A post-war plan outlined by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant envisions local “civil committees” governing Gaza after Israel has dismantled Hamas.
Blinken declined to say whether Netanyahu’s views had shifted in their discussions.
Hamas, an Islamist movement, seized sole control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, ousting Abbas’s Fatah party, with which it had shared power.
The United States and European Union blacklist Hamas as a “terrorist” organization.
Hamas’s Qatar-based chief Ismail Haniyeh said last week he was “open to the idea” of a single Palestinian administration in Gaza and the West Bank.
Blinken also called for “more food, more water, more medicine” for Gaza, where only limited humanitarian relief supplies have been arriving from Egypt.
Desperate Gazans on Tuesday climbed onto one truck carrying flour and canned goods and tossed the food to the crowd below, AFP footage showed.
Army spokesman Daniel Hagari said Tuesday that Israel is “ready and willing to facilitate as much humanitarian aid as the world will give.”
Since the Gaza war started, fears have grown of an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran-backed armed groups, especially Lebanon’s Hezbollah but also groups in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Defense Minister Gallant told Blinken on Tuesday that intensifying pressure on Iran was “critical” and could prevent a regional escalation.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels have carried out numerous attacks on passing container ships in the Red Sea, and the United States has set up a multinational naval task force to protect the vital sea lane.
On Tuesday, the rebels “launched a complex” attack, US Central Command said, adding that US and British forces had shot down 18 drones and three missiles, with no casualties or damage reported.
Blinken will make a surprise visit Wednesday to Bahrain, home base of the US Fifth Fleet, a State Department official said, for talks with King Hamad on preventing a regional escalation of the war.
Blinken will make a surprise visit to Bahrain Wednesday, a State Department official said, the latest leg of a crisis tour of the Middle East.
After meeting Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Blinken will fly to Bahrain for talks with King Hamad on preventing a regional escalation of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
The Gulf kingdom is a key partner of Washington and hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
Bahrain last month joined a 10-country naval task force announced by the United States to protect the vital Red Sea shipping route against missile and drone attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels.
The Huthis say they have been targeting “Israeli-linked” vessels in solidarity with Gaza in a campaign that has prompted many shipping firms to reroute their vessels with knock-on effects for the world economy.
