Europe 1 with AFP Credits // Andrew Harnik / POOL / AFP
American Secretary of State Antony Blinken continues an intense diplomatic sequence in the Middle East on Sunday in Jordan calling for avoiding at all costs a flare-up of the conflict in the Gaza Strip and preventing “an endless cycle of violence”. Mr. Blinken, who arrived in Amman the evening before, is to have talks with the King of Jordan Abdullah II in particular and visit a center of the World Food Program in the Jordanian capital, according to a senior American official in his entourage.
During a brief speech Saturday evening on the tarmac of Chania airport in Crete, Greece, he said that “we must ensure that the conflict does not spread.” “One of the real concerns is the border between Israel and Lebanon and we want to do everything possible to make sure there is no escalation,” he added. The Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel, an attack presented as its first response to the elimination, attributed to Israel, of Hamas number two on Tuesday near Beirut.
The “vital role” that Turkey can play
“We want to make sure that countries that think the same way use their links, their influence, their relationships with some of the actors that could be involved to keep control of things, to ensure that the conflict does not spread “, said Mr. Blinken, citing in particular the “vital role” that Turkey can play in this regard, after having discussed it on Saturday in Istanbul with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The relentless war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas, which entered its fourth month on Sunday, is raising fears of an overflow with the increase in violence not only on the Israeli-Lebanese border, but also in Iraq, Syria and the Red Sea. . Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip have left 22,600 dead, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health. Israel vowed to destroy Hamas after its unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which killed 1,140 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP count based on the Israeli death toll.