Blinken Headed to Middle East as US Alarm over Violence Grows

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaks at the State Department, Jan. 4, 2023, in Washington. (AP)
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaks at the State Department, Jan. 4, 2023, in Washington. (AP)
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Blinken Headed to Middle East as US Alarm over Violence Grows

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaks at the State Department, Jan. 4, 2023, in Washington. (AP)
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaks at the State Department, Jan. 4, 2023, in Washington. (AP)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Egypt, Israel and the West Bank this weekend, the State Department announced Thursday, as the US expressed alarm about escalating violence after Israel’s single deadliest operation in the West Bank in two decades.

Blinken’s visit to Israel has been planned for weeks, but the Israeli raid on a West Bank refugee camp earlier Thursday — which the Palestinians say killed nine people, including a 61-year-old woman — will likely dominate his talks in Jerusalem and Ramallah. The Israeli military also fatally shot a 22-year-old Palestinian later in the day.

The trip, the second by a senior US national security official this month, had already been expected to be fraught with tension over disagreements between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, particularly on the Palestinian conflict. Thursday's raid and the subsequent outcry are expected to make the visit even more difficult.

The top US diplomat for the Middle East said the administration was urging both sides to de-escalate tensions in the wake of the raid and decried a Palestinian announcement that they would cut off all security cooperation with Israel as a result.

Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said US officials had been in touch with top Israeli and Palestinian officials since the incident happened to stress the importance of calming the situation. She said the civilian casualties reported in Jenin were “quite regrettable.”

But, she also said the Palestinian announcement that it would suspend all security cooperation with Israel in the aftermath was a mistake, as was a Palestinian vow to bring the matter to the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.

“Obviously, we don’t think this is the right step to take at this moment,” Leaf told reporters on a conference call. “We want to see them move back in the other direction. We don’t think it makes sense” to go to an international forum now, she said. “They need to engage with each other.”

Blinken will hold talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo on Sunday before going to Jerusalem and Ramallah on Monday and Tuesday to see Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, the State Department said.

He will be the second top Biden official to visit Israel this year, following national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who made the trip just last week as US concerns were growing over the violence as well as the direction of Netanyahu’s new right-wing government.

“With both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the secretary will underscore the urgent need for the parties to take steps to deescalate tensions in order to put an end to the cycle of violence that has claimed too many innocent lives,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

The trip was announced just hours after the Israeli raid on suspected terrorists at the refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin.

After the raid, Israel’s defense minister directed forces in the occupied West Bank and on Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip to go on heightened alert as Hamas, the armed group that controls Gaza, threatened revenge.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority said it had halted security cooperation with Israel and would file complaints about the raid with the UN Security Council, International Criminal Court and other international bodies.

Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have soared since Israel launched the nightly raids in the West Bank last spring, following a spate of Palestinian attacks. The conflict has only intensified this month, as Netanyahu’s government came to office and pledged to take a hard line against the Palestinians.

In Jerusalem and Ramallah, Blinken will also underscore the importance the US attaches to maintaining the status quo at the flashpoint Jerusalem holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, where clashes have frequently erupted, Price said.

The Biden administration has serious concerns over the composition of Netanyahu’s government that includes several far-right Israeli politicians who are opposed to some of the administration’s fundamental Middle East policies, including a two-state resolution to the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Like Sullivan, Blinken does not plan to meet with the most controversial of those Cabinet members, according to US officials.

In Egypt, Blinken will raise human rights issues along with the unstable security situations in Libya and Sudan, the State Department said.



Israel Cuts off Gaza’s Southern City of Rafah, Vows to ‘Vigorously’ Expand in the Territory

 Displaced Palestinians flee from east to west of Gaza City after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders in the area, Friday April 11, 2025. (AP)
Displaced Palestinians flee from east to west of Gaza City after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders in the area, Friday April 11, 2025. (AP)
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Israel Cuts off Gaza’s Southern City of Rafah, Vows to ‘Vigorously’ Expand in the Territory

 Displaced Palestinians flee from east to west of Gaza City after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders in the area, Friday April 11, 2025. (AP)
Displaced Palestinians flee from east to west of Gaza City after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders in the area, Friday April 11, 2025. (AP)

Israel announced Saturday it has completed construction of a new security corridor that cuts off the southern city of Rafah from the rest of Gaza, as the military said it would soon expand "vigorously" in most of the small coastal territory. Palestinians were further squeezed into shrinking areas of land.

"Soon, (military) activity will expand rapidly to additional locations throughout most of Gaza and you will have to evacuate the fighting zones," Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement, without saying where Palestinians were meant to go.

The statement urged Palestinians to stand up and remove Hamas and release the remaining hostages, saying: "This is the only way to stop the war." There was no immediate Hamas response.

Israeli troops were deployed last week to the new security corridor referred to as Morag, the name of a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, after the army ordered sweeping evacuations covering most of Rafah, indicating it could soon launch another major ground operation.

Israel has vowed to seize large parts of Gaza to pressure Hamas to release the remaining 59 hostages, 24 of them believed to be alive, and accept proposed new ceasefire terms.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has also imposed a monthlong blockade on food, fuel and humanitarian aid that has left the territory’s roughly 2 million Palestinians facing acute shortages as supplies dwindle — a tactic that rights groups say is a war crime.

Israel has claimed that enough supplies entered Gaza during the two-month ceasefire that it shattered last month. Aid groups have disputed that.

Netanyahu has said Morag would be "a second Philadelphi corridor," referring to the Gaza side of the border with Egypt farther south, which has been under Israeli control since May 2024. Israel has also reasserted control of the Netzarim corridor, which cuts off Gaza's northern third from the rest of the territory.

The corridors, coupled with a buffer zone that Israel has razed and expanded, give it more than 50% control of the territory.

Katz said Palestinians interested in "voluntarily" relocating to other countries would be able to as part of a proposal by US President Donald Trump. Palestinians have rejected the proposal and expressed their determination to remain in their homeland.

Trump and Israeli officials have not said how they would respond if Palestinians refuse to leave Gaza. But Human Rights Watch and other groups say the plan would amount to "ethnic cleansing" — the forcible relocation of the civilian population of an ethnic group from a geographic area.

Many Palestinians have been crowding into squalid tent camps or the rubble of their previous homes, often displacing multiple times in response to Israel's evacuation orders since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, killed some 1,200 people, many of them civilians, and sparked the war.

Israel on Saturday ordered the evacuation of areas east of Khan Younis ahead of an attack. Military spokesperson Avichay Adraee added that fighters had fired rockets into Israel from these areas.

Israeli strikes across Gaza continued, killing at least 21 people in the last 24 hours, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants but says most of the over 50,000 Palestinians killed in the war have been women and children.

The ministry said at least 1,500 people have been killed since Israel's surprise bombardment resumed the war last month.

Israel says it has killed around 20,000 fighters in the war, without providing evidence.