ANTONY BLINKEN met US allies in the Arab world today as he sought to dampen rising anger at Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.
The US Secretary of State claimed to be exerting pressure on Israel to reduce civilian casualties from its invasion, which have passed 22,000, half of them children.
Mr Blinken met the King of Jordan and the Emir of Qatar today, following meetings with Greek and Turkish leaders on Saturday and ahead of talks with the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Israel itself in coming days.
Jordan, whose role as guarantor of access to the “holy places” in occupied Jerusalem makes it a key liaising point between Israel and Arab countries and which is a close US ally, alarmed Washington last week when it backed South Africa’s International Court of Justice lawsuit charging Israel with genocide.
Jordan said it pressed the US to back an immediate ceasefire. Washington has blocked resolutions demanding one at the UN security council, being the only state to vote against but wielding veto power as one of the permanent five members.
Mr Blinken also toured warehouses where food aid was being prepared for Gaza and claimed the US was pressing Israel to “open access routes into Gaza.”
US senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley criticised cumbersome processes and arbitrary Israeli inspections that were slowing humanitarian aid cargoes’ entry into Gaza after a visit on Saturday.
Mr Blinken also claimed Turkey would play a “positive role” in rebuilding Gaza after the war, irritating Israel which has been enraged by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comparison of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler. The talks sparked an unseemly spat on X, formerly Twitter, in which the leaders accused each other of racism for their treatment of the Kurds and Palestinians respectively.
Israel today claimed to have dismantled Hamas’s military infrastructure in northern Gaza and to have “wrapped up” high-intensity warfare there. Its invasion of south and central Gaza continues.
The apartheid state launched an invasion of the impoverished strip, which it has besieged since 2007, in October following a deadly attack by Hamas within Israel, which killed over 1,100 Israelis.
