Alexis Guilleux (in the United States) with AFP
modified to
8:25 a.m., January 31, 2023
The head of the American diplomacy Antony Blinken must go to the West Bank on Tuesday to meet President Mahmoud Abbas there at the end of an intense diplomatic sequence where he tried to call for a de-escalation between Israelis and Palestinians. In Ramallah, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, Mr. Blinken should once again encourage the head of the Palestinian Authority, although weakened, to do more to fight against anti-Israeli attacks. This comes in the wake of the Palestinian Authority’s decision to end its security cooperation with Israel in retaliation for last Thursday’s deadly Israeli raid in Jenin. The United States had said it regretted this decision, fearing that the situation on the ground would “worsen”.
A new spiral of deadly violence
Prior to this, the US Secretary of State will again have a series of talks with Israeli officials in Jerusalem, as well as meetings with Israeli and Palestinian civil society actors. Arrived Monday from Cairo, he urged Israelis and Palestinians to act urgently to restore calm, against the backdrop of a new spiral of deadly violence that international calls for restraint have failed to appease.
Call for de-escalation
Planned for a long time, the visit of the head of American diplomacy which began on Sunday in Egypt took a different turn with the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence in recent days. The deaths on the Palestinian and Israeli sides have multiplied: attacks, shootings, rockets, air raids and sanctions are constantly responding to each other, raising fears of a new spiral. “We now urge all parties to take urgent steps for a return to calm and de-escalation,” Blinken said Monday during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr. Blinken said he wanted to “restore a sense of security for Israelis and Palestinians alike.” He met his Israeli counterpart Eli Cohen in the evening and then Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
Netanyahu announces measures to punish relatives of attackers
In the wake of anti-Israeli attacks, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, announced measures aimed at punishing the relatives of the perpetrators of the attacks. On Sunday, Israeli forces sealed off the home of the family of a Palestinian man who killed six Israeli men and a Ukrainian woman on Friday in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian part of the Israeli-occupied Holy City, with a view to destroying it. The home of a Palestinian who injured two Israelis on Saturday, also in East Jerusalem, was also to be sealed.
Israeli guards killed a Palestinian in the West Bank on Sunday. On Monday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian in Hebron, in the south of this territory, according to the Palestinian authorities. The army said they shot at a fleeing driver. The anti-Israel attacks came after Israel’s deadliest raid in years in the West Bank with ten Palestinians killed in Jenin including fighters, followed by rocket fire from Gaza into Israel and Israeli retaliatory strikes.
Hamas, the ruling Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip, said Monday that Mr. Blinken’s visit reflected “absolute support” for the Israeli “occupation”.
Blinken’s room for maneuver seems limited
Mr. Blinken began his tour in Egypt, a country whose diplomacy and especially the intelligence services are regularly called upon to intervene in the Palestinian question. The first Arab country to have signed peace with Israel in 1979 and a neighboring state in the Gaza Strip under Israeli blockade for more than 15 years, Egypt receives Israeli heads of government as well as the leaders of the various Palestinian parties. The Egyptian presidency assured that “Egypt had made efforts in recent days to try to control the outbreak of tensions”.
However, Mr. Blinken’s room for maneuver seemed limited and, in private, American officials did not hide their frustration with the escalation and impasse in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict finds itself. Washington is trying above all to reconnect with Mr. Netanyahu in the face of the new political situation in Israel and the growing weight of the far right. American officials have recently succeeded in Jerusalem, a prelude to a possible upcoming visit by Mr. Netanyahu to the White House.