Blinken Reaffirms Need for Two-State Solution after Talks with Netanyahu

L-R: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu make statements to the media after their meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, on Monday, January 30, 2023. (Reuters)
L-R: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu make statements to the media after their meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, on Monday, January 30, 2023. (Reuters)
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Blinken Reaffirms Need for Two-State Solution after Talks with Netanyahu

L-R: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu make statements to the media after their meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, on Monday, January 30, 2023. (Reuters)
L-R: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu make statements to the media after their meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, on Monday, January 30, 2023. (Reuters)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israelis and Palestinians to ease tensions on Monday during a visit to Jerusalem, reaffirming a long-stalled peace vision of two states side by side as the "only path" forward.

Arriving amid the bloodiest violence in years, Blinken focused censure on a Palestinian gun spree outside a synagogue that put Israel on high alert but also cautioned against any celebration or avenging of such bloodshed.

Seven people were shot dead in Friday's attack by an East Jerusalem man who was himself killed by police. Lionized by many fellow Palestinians, he had no known links to armed groups.

A day earlier, Israel carried out an unusually deep raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, killing 10 residents, most of them gunmen. At least 35 Palestinians, including fighters and civilians, have died in violence surging since Jan. 1, medical officials say.

"It is the responsibility of everyone to take steps to calm tensions rather than inflame them," Blinken told reporters after landing in Tel Aviv.

Friday's rampage, he said, "was more than an attack on individuals. It was also an attack on the universal act of practicing one's faith. We condemn it in the strongest terms."

"And we condemn all those who celebrate these and any other acts of terrorism that take innocent lives, no matter who the victim is or what they believe. Calls for vengeance against more innocent victims are not the answer."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Blinken met later on Monday, has called for more citizens to carry guns as a precaution against such street attacks. But he has also warned Israelis not to resort to vigilante violence.

Blinken was due to see Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday.

Palestinian officials said Israeli settlers had set fire on Monday to two cars near the northern West Bank city of Nablus and thrown stones at a house near Ramallah, following a similar attack on Sunday.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, Palestinian officials said Israeli troops killed a 26-year-old man at a checkpoint. The army said troops opened fire on the man's car after he rammed into one of them and tried to flee an inspection.

The last round of US-sponsored talks on founding a Palestinian state alongside Israel stalled in 2014.

Netanyahu's new hardline government includes partners who oppose Palestinian statehood, and control over the Palestinian territories is divided between Abbas, who favors diplomacy, and rival Hamas, who are sworn to Israel's destruction.

After meeting Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Blinken restated Washington's belief that a two-state solution was the only way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"As I said to the prime minister, anything that would move us away from that vision is, in our judgment, detrimental to Israel's long-term security and long-term identity as a Jewish and democratic state," Blinken said.

Recent data indicates that public support for a two-state solution has reached a historic low.

According to a survey published last week by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research, 33% of Palestinians and 34% of Israeli Jews say they support it, a significant drop from data collected in 2020.

Two-thirds of Palestinians and 53% of Israeli Jews said they opposed the two-state solution.

The United States has voiced support for Israel's security and for Palestinians to enjoy equal measures of dignity.



Israeli Strike Kills Hungry Gaza Family in Their Sleep

Relatives mourn over the shrouded bodies of Al-Shaer family members at the Al-Shifa in Gaza City, 23 July 2025. (EPA)
Relatives mourn over the shrouded bodies of Al-Shaer family members at the Al-Shifa in Gaza City, 23 July 2025. (EPA)
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Israeli Strike Kills Hungry Gaza Family in Their Sleep

Relatives mourn over the shrouded bodies of Al-Shaer family members at the Al-Shifa in Gaza City, 23 July 2025. (EPA)
Relatives mourn over the shrouded bodies of Al-Shaer family members at the Al-Shifa in Gaza City, 23 July 2025. (EPA)

The Al-Shaer family went to bed hungry at their home in Gaza City. An Israeli airstrike killed them in their sleep.

The family - freelance journalist Wala al-Jaabari, her husband and their five children - were among more than 100 people killed in 24 hours of Israeli strikes or gunfire, according to health officials.

Their corpses lay in white shrouds outside their bombed home on Wednesday with their names scribbled in pen. Blood seeped through the shrouds as they lay there, staining them red.

"This is my cousin. He was 10. We dug them out of the rubble," said Amr al-Shaer, holding one of the bodies after retrieving it.

Iman al-Shaer, another relative who lives nearby, said the family hadn't eaten anything before the bombs came down. "The children slept without food," he said.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike at the family's home, but said its air force had struck 120 targets throughout Gaza in the past day, including "terrorist cells, military structures, tunnels, booby-trapped structures, and additional terrorist infrastructure sites".

Relatives said some neighbors were spared only because they had been out searching for food at the time of the strike.

Ten more Palestinians died overnight from starvation, the Gaza health ministry said, bringing the total number of people who have starved to death to 111, most of them in recent weeks as a wave of hunger crashes on the Palestinian enclave.

The World Health Organization said on Wednesday 21 children under the age of five were among those who died of malnutrition so far this year. It said it had been unable to deliver any food for nearly 80 days between March and May and that a resumption of food deliveries was still far below what is needed.

In a statement on Wednesday, 111 organizations, including Mercy Corps, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Refugees International, said mass starvation was spreading even as tons of food, clean water and medical supplies sit untouched just outside Gaza, where aid groups are blocked from accessing them.

Israel, which cut off all supplies to Gaza from the start of March and reopened it with new restrictions in May, says it is committed to allowing in aid but must control it to prevent it from being diverted by fighters. It says it has let enough food into Gaza during the war and blames Hamas for the suffering of Gaza's 2.2 million people.

Israel has also accused the United Nations of failing to act in a timely fashion, saying 700 truckloads of aid are idling inside Gaza. "It is time for them to pick it up and stop blaming Israel for the bottlenecks which are occurring," Israeli government spokesman David Mercer said on Wednesday.

The United Nations and aid groups trying to deliver food to Gaza say Israel, which controls everything that comes in and out, is choking delivery, and Israeli troops have shot hundreds of Palestinians dead close to aid collection points since May.

"We have a minimum set of requirements to be able to operate inside Gaza," Ross Smith, the director of emergencies at the UN World Food Program, told Reuters. "One of the most important things I want to emphasize is that we need to have no armed actors near our distribution points, near our convoys."

FALTERING PEACE TALKS

The war between Israel and Hamas has been raging for nearly two years since Hamas killed some 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages from southern Israel in the deadliest attack in Israel's history.

Israel has since killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, decimated Hamas as a military force, reduced most of the territory to ruins and forced nearly the entire population to flee their homes multiple times.

US Middle East peace envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to hold new ceasefire talks, travelling to Europe this week for meetings on the Gaza war and a range of other issues, a US official said on Tuesday.

Talks on a proposal for a 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which would include the release of more of the 50 hostages still being held in Gaza, are being mediated by Qatar and Egypt with Washington's backing.

Successive rounds of negotiations have achieved no breakthrough since the collapse of a ceasefire in March.

A senior Palestinian official told Reuters Hamas might give mediators a response to the latest proposals in Doha later on Wednesday, on the condition that amendments be made to two major sticking points: details on an Israeli military withdrawal, and on how to distribute aid during a truce.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet includes far-right parties that oppose any agreement that ends without the total destruction of Hamas.

"The second I spot weakness in the prime minister and if I come to think, heaven forbid, that this is about to end with us surrendering instead of with Hamas's absolute surrender, I won’t remain (in the government) for even a single day," Finance Minister Belalel Smotrich told Army Radio.