US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to meet with officials in Israel on Tuesday for tense high-stakes talks as the Gaza war threatens to engulf the Middle East.
Making his fourth tour in the region since war broke out Oct. 7, Blinken arrived in Qatar on Sunday warning that the fighting in Gaza could “easily metastasize” into a region-wide conflict.
With Israel continuing to fight Hamas forces in Gaza, as well as Iranian-backed militants in Lebanon and the Red Sea, Blinken told reporters that the US has “an intense focus on preventing this conflict from spreading.
“These are not necessarily easy conversations, but it is vital that we engage in this diplomacy now both for the future of Gaza itself and for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” Blinken said.
While in Qatar, the top US diplomat also discussed efforts to free the more than 130 hostages still believed to be held by Hamas after a previous Qatari-led agreement ended.
Blinken was to speak with officials in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia before arriving in Israel to press its leadership on boosting humanitarian aid to Gaza, too.
Blinken has called for Israel to allow the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the now 3-month-old war to be allowed to reclaim their homes.
“Palestinian civilians must be able to return home as soon as conditions allow. They cannot, they must not, be pressed to leave Gaza,” he said.
Blinken added that the war needs to come to an end to avoid the deaths of more civilians in Gaza, with the fatality toll rising to nearly a reported 23,000 and recently including two Al Jazeera journalists.
“This is an unimaginable tragedy. And that’s also been the case for … far too many innocent Palestinian men, women and children,” the secretary of state said.
But Blinken’s tasks may prove to be his most difficult ones yet, after Israel’s latest strikes that have killed senior officials with the terrorist Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Last week, Hamas said its deputy leader abroad, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed by an Israeli drone strike in Beirut.
The incident was cited by Qatar’s government as to why the latest round of hostage negotiations with the terror group broke down.
Then on Monday, Hezbollah said Wissam al-Tawil, a commander of its elite Radwan forces, was killed along the southern Lebanon border, the Washington Post reported.
The deaths are only among the latest in the ongoing fighting between Israel and the Hamas ally, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office noting that 80,000 Israelis have been displaced by Hezbollah rocket fire since the war began.
“We are now at a fork of the roads: Either Hezbollah backs away, or we will push it away,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement, suggesting a two-pronged war was imminent for the Jewish state.