JEDDAH: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in the Middle East early on Tuesday for crisis talks amid simmering tension in occupied East Jerusalem and a fragile truce in Gaza.
Blinken will travel to Jerusalem, Ramallah, Cairo and Amman and meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and King Abdullah of Jordan.
The visit follows an 11-day onslaught by Israel on the Gaza Strip, in which 248 Palestinians, 66 of them children, were killed in a barrage of airstrikes and artillery shelling. A ceasefire brokered by Egypt has been in place since last Friday.
“Our primary focus is on maintaining the ceasefire, getting the assistance to the people who need it,” the White House said on Monday.
US President Joe Biden said Blinken would “continue our administration’s efforts to rebuild ties to, and support for, the Palestinian people and leaders, after years of neglect.”
However, the spark for the latest conflict was not in Gaza, but in occupied East Jerusalem. Israeli authorities are threatening to evict 13 Palestinian families, about 300 people, from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah area of the city and hand the land over to Jewish settlers. A court has postponed a ruling on the case.
Leaving today for Jerusalem. Even as we were working with the parties and partners to help reach a ceasefire, we were also focused on the road ahead, including steps we could take to build a better future for Israelis and Palestinians.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken)
Amid Palestinian protests and rising tension, Israeli security forces fired stun grenades this month at worshippers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, and there were also clashes between Arab and Jewish Israelis.
Israeli police said they had arrested 1,550 people and charged 150 in the past two weeks over “violent events.” Overnight on Sunday they arrested 16 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and 27 in East Jerusalem.
On Monday, Israeli forces shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian schoolboy near Sheikh Jarrah. Israeli authorities said the boy had stabbed two men in their twenties, one of them a soldier.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry discussed Palestine on Monday in talks in Amman.
Safadi said it was essential to avoid a recurrence of the Israeli provocation that had sparked the most recent conflict.
“The issue of Sheikh Jarrah must be dealt with on the basis that there is neither right nor legitimacy for any Israeli decision to displace people from their homes, which would be a war crime that the international community cannot tolerate,” he said.
