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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)
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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.

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Thousands of Lebanese Return to their Homes as Israel-Hezbollah Ceasefire Takes Hold

Displaced residents sit in traffic as they return to their villages following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024, in Ablah, eastern Lebanon. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced residents sit in traffic as they return to their villages following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024, in Ablah, eastern Lebanon. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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Thousands of Lebanese Return to their Homes as Israel-Hezbollah Ceasefire Takes Hold

Displaced residents sit in traffic as they return to their villages following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024, in Ablah, eastern Lebanon. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced residents sit in traffic as they return to their villages following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024, in Ablah, eastern Lebanon. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Thousands of Lebanese displaced by the war between Israel and Hezbollah militants returned home Wednesday as a ceasefire took hold, driving cars stacked with personal belongings and defying warnings from Lebanese and Israeli troops to avoid some areas.
If it endures, the ceasefire would end nearly 14 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which escalated in mid-September into all-out war and threatened to pull Hezbollah's patron, Iran, and Israel's closest ally, the United States, into a broader conflagration.
The deal does not address the war in Gaza, where Israeli strikes overnight on two schools-turned-shelters in Gaza City killed 11 people, including four children, according to hospital officials. Israel said one strike targeted a Hamas sniper and the other targeted militants hiding among civilians.
The truce in Lebanon could give reprieve to the 1.2 million Lebanese displaced by the fighting and the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along the border.
“They were a nasty and ugly 60 days,” said Mohammed Kaafarani, 59, who was displaced from the Lebanese village of Bidias. “We reached a point where there was no place to hide."
The US- and France-brokered deal, approved by Israel late Tuesday, calls for an initial two-month halt to fighting and requires Hezbollah to end its armed presence in southern Lebanon, while Israeli troops are to return to their side of the border.
Thousands of additional Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers would deploy in the south, and an international panel headed by the United States would monitor compliance.
Israel says it reserves the right to strike Hezbollah should it violate the terms of the deal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said troops arrested four Hezbollah operatives, including a local commander, who had entered what it referred to as a restricted area. It said troops have been ordered to prevent people from returning to villages near the border.
Israel is still fighting Hamas militants in Gaza in response to the group’s cross-border raid into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. But President Joe Biden on Tuesday said his administration would make another push in the coming days for a ceasefire there and the release of dozens of hostages held by Hamas.
Hezbollah supporters declare victory despite devastation Israel can claim major victories in the war, including the killing of Hezbollah’s top leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of its senior commanders, as well as the destruction of extensive militant infrastructure. A complex attack involving exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, widely attributed to Israel, appeared to show a remarkable degree of penetration into the secretive militant group.
The battered Hezbollah has lost much of the mystique it acquired by fighting Israel to a stalemate in the 2006 war. Yet the Shiite militant group still managed to put up heavy resistance, slowing Israel’s advance while firing scores of rockets, missiles and drones across the border each day.
“This is a moment of victory, pride and honor for us, the Shiite sect, and for all of Lebanon,” said Hussein Sweidan, a resident returning to the port city of Tyre. Sporadic celebratory gunfire was heard at a main roundabout in the city, as drivers honked their horns and residents cheered.
Israel carried out heavy strikes until the ceasefire took hold, pounding targets in the already hard-hit southern suburbs of Beirut known as the Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah was headquartered. Residents returning to its rubble-strewn streets on Wednesday projected defiance.
“We don’t care about the rubble or destruction. We lost our livelihood, our properties, but it’s OK, it will all come back," said Fatima Hanifa, evoking the rebuilding after the 2006 war.
"It will be even more beautiful. And I say to Netanyahu that you have lost, and lost, and lost because we are back and the others (Israelis) didn’t come back.”
Other Lebanese are more critical of Hezbollah, accusing it of having dragged the economically devastated country into an unnecessary war on behalf of its patron, Iran.
“They control us and we can’t do anything about it. This war killed whoever it killed and now they’re telling us it’s a victory,” said a young man who was returning from neighboring Syria after being displaced from the eastern Bekaa province. He spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retribution.
Some Israelis are concerned the deal doesn’t go far enough. In Israel, the mood was far more subdued, with displaced Israelis concerned that Hezbollah had not been defeated and that there was no progress toward returning hostages held in Gaza.
“I think it is still not safe to return to our homes because Hezbollah is still close to us,” said Eliyahu Maman, who was displaced from the northern city of Kiryat Shmona, which was hit hard by the months of fighting.
A handful of people milled around the city on Wednesday, inspecting damage from earlier rocket attacks. The town’s shopping mall, which had been hit before, appeared to have new damage, and a rocket was planted in the ground next to an apartment building.
A significant return of the displaced to their communities, many of which have suffered extensive damage from rocket fire, could take months.
Israel warns Lebanese not to return to border as troops remain The Israeli military warned displaced Lebanese not to return to evacuated villages in southern Lebanon, where Israeli troops were still present following their ground invasion in early October. Israeli forces opened fire to push back a number of vehicles that were entering a restricted area, it said.
Three journalists, including a freelance photographer working for The Associated Press, said they were shot and wounded by Israeli troops while covering the return of displaced people to the town of Khiam, around 6 kilometers (4 miles) from the border, which had seen heavy fighting in recent days. The Israeli military said it was investigating.
An Israeli security official said Israeli forces remained in their positions hours after the ceasefire began and will only gradually withdraw.
The official said the pace of the withdrawal and the scheduled return of Lebanese civilians would depend on whether the deal is implemented and enforced. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the deal and its implementation with the media.
The Lebanese military asked displaced people returning to southern Lebanon to avoid frontline villages and towns until Israeli forces withdraw.
Residents will return to vast destruction wrought by the Israeli military, with entire villages flattened. The military said it found vast weapons caches and infrastructure it says was meant for Hezbollah to launch an Oct. 7-style attack on northern Israel.
More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon since the start of the conflict, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The fighting killed more than 70 people in Israel, more than half civilians, as well as dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.