As part of his fourth tour of the Middle East since the October 7 attacks by Hamas, U.S Secretary of State, Antony Blinken is due to visit UAE and Saudi Arabia on Monday, January 8, 2023.
He is scheduled to meet officials in the UAE and Saudi Arabia as he attempts to prevent the conflict from widening further as regional tensions mount.
He will speak with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Blinken visited Greece, Turkey, Jordan and Qatar over the weekend.
Before leaving Doha in Qatar, Blinken gave a news conference where he made several comments about the Israel-Hamas war.
He said that Palestinian civilians must be able to return home “as soon as conditions allow,” adding, “They cannot, they must not be pressed to leave Gaza.”
Some Israeli ministers have recently spoken in favour of “encouraging” Palestinians to leave and re-establishing Jewish settlements in the territory, although this is not official Israeli policy.
Blinken also warned that the Israel-Gaza war could spread across the region without concerted peace efforts:
“This is a moment of profound tension for the region. This is a conflict that could easily metastasise, causing even more insecurity and suffering.”
Antony Blinken
Fears that the conflict could spread have been growing since Israel’s assassination last week of a top Hamas official, Saleh al-Arouri, in a strike on an office in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut that is a Hezbollah stronghold.
It was the first airstrike on the Lebanese capital since the end of the hugely destructive Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006.
Blinken will then head to Israel where he’ll hold talks there on Tuesday.
According to an Israeli channel, the U.S Secretary of state will meet Israeli officials and will ask the Prime Minister to announce the end of the “military phase” of the war in Gaza and move to “targeted raids.”
73 Palestinians Killed In Israeli Strikes In 24 Hours
In other developments, the Health Ministry in Gaza disclosed that seventy-three Palestinians were killed and 99 wounded in attacks by Israel on Gaza over the past 24 hours.
Eight people were killed in an Israeli air strike near Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
More than 22,800 Palestinians have been killed and more than 58,000 wounded since the war began.
The Israeli air force also announced that it carried out a series of overnight attacks on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
These included a military compound in the village of Marwahin. Also hit was a rocket launcher and other infrastructure in the village of Aita al-Shaab.
Omar Ashour, a Professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, opined to a news agency that the ongoing war in Gaza will last for a longer period of time.
He noted that it is clear that Israel’s ground forces in southern Gaza are meeting stiff resistance from Palestinian fighters.
“In Shujayea neighbourhood, for example, an Israeli commander was talking to the media and describing how the area had been cleared – just then an attack happened,” Ashour told the news agency.
“In Khan Younis, based on the statements from the Israeli military, nine brigades are deployed in just one governate of the Gaza Strip. These include paratrooper brigades, a special forces brigade, and armoured brigades.
“When you have this number of elite forces in such a small area it tells me the fight has a very long way to go.”
Omar Ashour
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