RAMALLAH – Top US diplomat Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to the occupied West Bank on Sunday and met with the president of the Palestinian Authority as he continued his visit to the region amid rising tensions over Israel’s war with Hamas.
Blinken and Mahmoud Abbas met in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the de facto capital of Palestine, in his second visit to the region since Palestinian Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 240 hostages. others are hostages.
As Israel continues a campaign of airstrikes that Gaza health officials say has killed nearly 9,500 Palestinians, Secretary of State Blinken rejected calls for a ceasefire from Arab officials on Saturday after pleading, unsuccessfully, with Israel for a more limited pause in fighting a day earlier. .
In addition to trying to ensure that the conflict does not spread in the region, Blinken is trying to start a discussion about how Gaza can be governed after the complete destruction of Hamas which Israel says is its goal.
Blinken told Abbas that the Palestinian Authority should play a leading role in what happens next in the Gaza Strip, a senior State Department official told Reuters.
“(The future of) Gaza was not the focus of the meeting but the Palestinian Authority seems willing to play a role,” added a senior State Department official.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at Muqata in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, November 5, 2023. REUTERS
The two met for about an hour but did not speak to the media.
Abbas told Blinken there should be an immediate ceasefire and aid should be allowed into Gaza, according to spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh.
Blinken said the United States is committed to getting aid to Gaza and restoring essential services there, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a reading of the meeting.
Demonstrators call for the release of people kidnapped by Hamas during a demonstration near the HaKirya base in Tel Aviv, Israel.NEIL HALL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
“The secretary also expressed the commitment of the United States to work towards realizing the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for the establishment of a Palestinian state,” said Miller.
Blinken has suggested an “effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority” would make the most sense to ultimately run the strip but acknowledged that other countries and international agencies will likely play a role in security and interim governance.
Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has seen its popularity erode amid allegations of corruption, incompetence and a widely hated security cooperation agreement with Israel. It is unclear who will replace the aging and frail Abbas, 87, a staunch opponent of Hamas.
The foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan said on Saturday after meeting with Blinken that it was too early to talk about the future of Gaza, as they called for an immediate ceasefire to deal with the humanitarian crisis that has hit the strip’s 2.3 million residents.
Blinken argued that a ceasefire would only allow Hamas to regroup, but tried to convince Israel to agree to a location-specific pause that would allow much-needed aid to be distributed inside Gaza.
The meeting was Blinken’s second meeting with Abbas since the conflict began, but the first took place in the West Bank. It was not announced in advance and Reuters agreed not to publish details of the trip until it was completed due to security concerns.
Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, already at a more than 15-year high this year, has surged further since the war began, with more than 170 attacks on Palestinians involving Jewish settlers recorded by the United Nations.
Blinken and Abbas “discussed efforts to restore calm and stability in the West Bank, including the need to stop extremist violence against Palestinians and hold them accountable,” Miller said.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
