Blinken returns to the Middle East as tensions with Israel rise
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken returns to the Middle East this week with the aim of getting Israel to curb attacks that are killing thousands of Palestinian civilians and prevent the war from spreading across the region.
But previously unreported details of a clash between Mr Blinken and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel point to the challenges ahead.
At a private meeting in November, Mr. Blinken told Mr. Netanyahu that Israelis should agree to a series of pauses in the fighting in Gaza to allow more aid to flow into the war zone and allow civilians to leave the areas being destroyed. attacked.
Mr. Netanyahu declined, American officials said, on condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation in Jerusalem. Mr Blinken then said he would announce the Biden administration’s demand at a news conference, prompting Mr Netanyahu to rush to pre-empt him by issuing a defiant statement. statement by video. “I told him, ‘We have sworn and I have sworn to eliminate Hamas,’” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Nothing will stop us.”
The impasse on November 3 brings the situation into sharp relief evolving relationship between the United States and its top partner in the Middle East, a relationship that President Biden has tasked Mr. Blinken with shepherding during a spiraling crisis.
Since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, Mr Biden has strongly supported Israel’s war in Gaza, in which the Israeli army, armed with US weapons, has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
But as Mr. Blinken flies to the Middle East for the fourth time since October, Mr. Biden and his aides are increasingly wrestling with their Israeli counterparts on a range of critical issues, including the need to reduce civilian casualties, the risks of a broader regional war and the shape of a post-conflict Gaza.
These disagreements are likely to continue when Mr. Blinken arrives in Israel in a marathon of stops over a week: Turkey, Greece, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. He also plans to visit the Palestinian Authority headquarters in the West Bank.
“We don’t expect every conversation on this trip to be easy,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters on Thursday. “There are clearly difficult problems for the region and difficult choices ahead.”
For Mr. Blinken, it is a New Year’s return to the intense shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East that began last fall, after two years of overwhelming attention to Russia’s war in Ukraine and China. In some ways, this is the most challenging assignment of his tenure as Secretary of State.
In contrast to the Biden administration’s almost unequivocal support for Ukraine, Mr. Blinken has sought to balance support for Israel’s war against Hamas with efforts to limit Palestinian suffering. That has led to tensions with some American allies abroad, and political pressure at home — even at Mr. Blinken’s residence in Virginia, where demonstrators stood near the driveway on Thursday. fake blood splattered on his government SUV and held signs labeling him as a “war criminal.”
Within the State Department, aides sent Mr. Blinken at least three different cables have been objecting to the government’s war policy since October.
Mr. Miller said Mr. Blinken’s priorities in Israel include discussing “immediate action to substantially increase humanitarian assistance to Gaza” and plans for the Israeli military to “move to the next phase of operations.” and new steps to protect citizens and enable them to return to their homes.
Mr. Blinken will also speak to officials across the region about freeing the 129 hostages about eight Americans, who according to Israel are still being held in Gaza. And he plans to tackle the thorny topics of plans for Gaza’s governance and the prospects for reaching a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians once this conflict is over.
“It’s going to be a lot of difficult conversations,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC.
Mr. Elgindy was skeptical that Mr. Blinken could make much progress in securing greater protection for Gaza’s citizens, or in shaping Israel’s post-conflict plans. “I don’t know how well that will go because they’ve been having the same conversation for three months and haven’t made much progress,” he said.
The subject of what follows the war in Gaza could be the most difficult of all. Mr Biden and Mr Blinken have renewed their calls for a long-term political settlement in which Israel agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state. But Mr. Netanyahu told reporters last month that he is “proud.” having blocked a Palestinian state during his many turns as prime minister since the 1990s. “They’re just on different planets,” Mr. Elgindy said.
A key problem is the pressure Netanyahu is experiencing from the right-wing members of his governing coalition, with whom the Biden administration is openly frustrated. Tuesday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sharply reprimanded two Israeli ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, after advocating the resettlement of Palestinians outside Gaza.
A statement issued under Miller’s name called their comments “inflammatory and irresponsible” and said the United States had “been clear, consistent and unequivocal that Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, with Hamas no longer in control of his future. and without any terrorist groups that could threaten Israel.”
In a sign of the obstacles Mr. Blinken faces, Mr. Ben-Gvir, Israel’s Minister of National Security, replied on social media that while he admires the United States, “with all due respect, he is not just another star under the American flag.”
The Biden administration is also concerned that conflict could erupt on a larger scale in the region. Preventing that was an urgent priority for Mr. Blinken’s first trip there, just days after the Hamas disaster in southern Israel.
The risk appeared to have declined for several weeks but has increased again, with a recent bombing in Lebanon blamed on Israel Saleh al-Arouri murdered, deputy political leader of Hamas; increasingly deadly firefights between Yemen’s Houthi militia and the US military; and continued attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria by militias there.
These groups are all backed by Iran, which U.S. intelligence officials say does not want a broader war. But regional violence could increase if Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese militia and Hamas ally, decides to retaliate for the attack it has threatened on Mr al-Arouri.
And separately, Israel has warned the Biden administration that it could attack Hezbollah with greater force if US officials cannot convince Hezbollah to stop attacking northern Israel and withdraw from the border.
But even as Mr. Blinken is expected to hold tough talks with Mr. Netanyahu, he has continued to approve major arms shipments to Israel without conditions. He is implementing a White House policy that Mr. Biden has overseen because of what aides call the president’s decades-long emotional attachment to Israel.
On December 29, the State Department approved sending $147.5 million in 155-millimeter artillery shells and related equipment to Israel, invoking an emergency provision to circumvent a Congressional review process. The move by Mr. Blinken angered some Democratic lawmakers, who have criticized the Biden administration for its unconditional support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Mr. Blinken first invoked an emergency declaration on the Israel-Gaza war on Dec. 8 to bypass Congress. Send 13,000 bullets to Israel of tank ammunition worth more than 106 million dollars.
By mid-December, the U.S. government had approved the shipment of about 20,000 air-to-ground munitions since the war began on Oct. 7, according to internal U.S. government reports detailed by U.S. officials. Israel has fallen in many attacks in densely populated Gaza 2,000 pound bombsthe largest that armies typically use.
But the State Department has yet to approve Israeli orders for 24,000 assault rifles worth $34 million. The The New York Times reports this In early November, it emerged that while the department’s office that oversees arms transfers supported the sale, some congressional officials and U.S. diplomats worried the guns would end up in the hands of civilian militias trying to force Palestinians out of the West Bank. to drive away. Colonist violence against Palestinians had increased even before the war and continues to do so greatly accelerated since October 7.
Mr. Biden has called on the Israeli government to curb violence even as far-right Cabinet officials, notably Mr. Smotrich and Mr. Ben-Gvir, encourage settlement expansion in the West Bank. Mr Blinken is expected to raise the issue again during his visit.
Edward Wong reported from Washington and from the US Secretary of State’s plane to the Middle East, and Michael Crowley reported from Washington.