Blinken Headed to Middle East as US Alarm over Violence Grows

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's military said on Thursday its special forces had raided an underground missile production site in Syria in September that it said was primed to produce hundreds of precision missiles for use against Israel by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

The complex near Masyaf, close to the Mediterranean coast, was "the flagship of Iranian manufacturing efforts in our region", Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told a briefing with reporters.

"This facility was designed to manufacture hundreds of strategic missiles per year from start to finish, for Hezbollah to use in their aerial attacks on Israel."

He said the plant, dug into a mountainside, had been under observation by Israel since construction began in 2017 and was on the point of being able to manufacture precision-guided missiles, some with a range of up to 300 km (190 miles).

"This ability was becoming active, so we're talking about an immediate threat," he said.

Details of the Sept. 8 raid have been reported in Israeli media but Shoshani said this was the first confirmation by the military, which rarely comments on special forces operations.

At the time, Syrian state media said at least 16 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the west of the country.

Shoshani said the nighttime raid was "one of the more complex operations the IDF has done in recent years". Accompanied by airstrikes, it involved dozens of aircraft and around 100 helicopter-borne troops, he said.

"At the end of the raid, the troops dismantled the facility, including the machines and the manufacturing equipment, themselves," he said.

The military released footage showing Israeli troops boarding and dismounting from helicopters and moving through what appears to be a concrete-lined tunnel and industrial site, where they examine documents.

Other footage showed senior commanders at a control center, apparently as the operation proceeds.

Israeli officials have accused the former Syrian government of president Bahar al-Assad of helping the Lebanese-based Hezbollah movement receive arms from Iran and say they are determined to stop the flow of weapons into Lebanon.

As Assad's government crumbled towards the end of last year, Israel launched a series of strikes against Syrian military infrastructure and weapons manufacturing sites to prevent them falling into the hands of enemies.

Blinken Headed to Middle East as US Alarm over Violence Grows