Blinken to push for more aid for Gaza in talks with Israel's Netanyahu
World
Blinken to push for more aid for Gaza in talks with Israel's Netanyahu
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at talks aimed at ensuring more aid flows into Gaza, amid increasingly tense relations between the two allies over the six-month-old war with Hamas.
In Gaza, Israel claimed to have killed or captured hundreds of Hamas fighters in a five-day operation at the Al Shifa hospital complex, one of the only medical facilities even partially functioning in the north. Hamas and medical staff deny fighters were present there.
Blinken, on his sixth trip to the Middle East since the war broke out on Oct. 7, has been engaged in an intense round of diplomacy since arriving in the region on Wednesday, meeting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia and foreign ministers and officials from Arab nations in Cairo on Thursday.
Parallel meetings are also taking place in Doha on Friday aimed at securing a ceasefire in the conflict.
The top US diplomat's latest visit to Israel comes at a time of strained ties between the two countries, with US President Joe Biden calling Israel's campaign in Gaza "over the top" and saying it has had too great a toll on civilian lives.
Blinken said he would address the growing gap between the two countries in his one-on-one conversation Netanyahu. He is also set to meet with the Israeli war cabinet.
Blinken will push Netanyahu to take urgent steps to allow more aid into the densely-populated enclave, where mass death from famine is imminent, according to the United Nations.
The war was triggered by a raid into southern Israel by Hamas fighters who killed 1,200 and took 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies. More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent Israeli bombardments, with many more feared dead under the rubble, Gaza health authorities say.
US officials say the number of aid deliveries via land needs to increase fast and that aid needs to be sustained over a long period. Israel says it is not blocking food aid, but aid agencies say it is not providing enough access or security.
“A hundred percent of the population of Gaza is experiencing severe levels of acute food insecurity. We cannot, we must not allow that to continue,” Blinken told a news conference late on Thursday.
“Israel needs to do more. Tomorrow, I’ll be talking to our partners about how to coordinate our efforts,” Blinken said.
Blinken is also expected to discuss Israel’s intention to launch a ground offensive on Rafah, a city on the southern edge of the enclave where more than half of the population is sheltering in makeshift accommodation.
Washington has repeatedly objected to such a plan. Netanyahu told Biden in a phone call on Monday that Israel sees no other way to defeat Hamas fighters it says are holed up there.
Last week, the leader of Biden's Democratic Party in the US Senate called Netanyahu an obstacle to peace and said Israelis should vote him out. Biden called it a "good speech"; Netanyahu called it "inappropriate" and later held a video conference with lawmakers from Biden's Republican opposition.
RAFAH ALTERNATIVES
The discussion on Friday will likely lay the groundwork for meetings in Washington between senior Israeli and US officials next week, when the United States will present to the Israelis alternative ways to hunt down Hamas without resorting to a full-on assault that would endanger more civilian lives.
Talks in Qatar on a truce are focused on a proposal for a six-week halt to fighting during which some 40 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas would be released, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails.
However, Israel is only prepared to commit to a temporary pause to the conflict and has repeatedly said it will push on with its campaign to achieve its aim of eradicating Hamas, which controls Gaza. Hamas wants a permanent end to the war and for Israeli troops to withdraw.
"The gaps are narrowing and we're continuing to push for an agreement in Doha," Blinken said on Thursday. "There's still difficult work to get there. But I continue to believe its possible."
In Gaza, fighting has been concentrated in recent days on the Al Shifa hospital complex, which is also sheltering hundreds of people displaced from their homes.
Israeli troops entered the facility on Monday and have been combing through the sprawling complex, which they say is connected to a tunnel network used by Hamas.
Israel said it had killed hundreds of fighters and detained more than 500 suspects in its operation on Al Shifa, including 358 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It said three senior Islamic Jihad military commanders and two Hamas officials responsible for operations in the occupied West Bank were detained, as well as other Hamas internal security officials.
"Those who did not surrender to our forces fought against our forces and were eliminated," Israel's Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a briefing late on Thursday.
Hamas denies its fighters were in the compound and says those killed there were civilians and those rounded up include medical staff.
Israel issued pictures of faces of hundreds of men it said were fighters captured in the hospital, then later acknowledged that some were not captives. Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run government media office, said the release of the photos reflected Israel's "crisis and failure".
"There are images of individuals who are currently outside Palestine, and there are images of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and medical staff in general working inside the hospital, providing medical care and services under the circumstances of hospital destruction and destruction of other health facilities," he said.
