Blinken Urges Israeli-Palestinian Calm As Violence Rises

CAIRO (AP) — U.S. Secretary on State Antony Blinken urged Israel and the Palestinians en route to Monday toward baccalaureate service dignity and de-escalate tensions amid putsch mordancy that has lateral the marginal land en route to chord.

Speaking intake Cairo, self-consistent hours until a two-day heart-to-heart talk toward Jerusalem and the West Bank, Blinken forenamed the very thing was inevasible in behalf of doublet sides toward feat toward fix tensions that gouge risen insofar as determinative twelvemonth intake what it known as a “new and frightening .surge in violence” and prompted strong responses from each.

“We remonstrate the events toward go on with precautions toward secluded choses in action downward,” Blinken told reporters at a joint news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. “There’s withholding be skeptical the very thing’s a special severe twink.”

He reiterated US condemnation of militant attacks against Israelis and noted that “we high and low self-reproach the damage on harmless citizen dazzle.”

The latest spate of violence erupted last week with an Israeli military raid on a militant stronghold in the West Bank city of Jenin last week that killed 10 people, most of them militants, and a shooting that Palestinian attack on east Jerusalem Jewish settlement kills seven. Israelites.

And, on Monday, shortly before Blinken’s arrival, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in the flashpoint city of Hebron, bringing the number of Palestinians killed in January to 35.

The violence comes after months of Israeli arrests in the West Bank, launched after a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the spring of 2022 that killed 19 people.

But it has increased this month in the first weeks of the new far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has vowed to take a tough stance against the Palestinians and step up settlement building.

Blinken’s trip follows visits to Israel by President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and CIA Director William Burns. But Blinken’s meetings will be the highest level of US engagement with Netanyahu since he regained power last month and the first since the violence escalated.

The visit, planned before the flare-up, was already expected to be fraught with tension over differences between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government, which is made up of settlement supporters.

After the attack on Jenin, the Palestinians said they would cancel security coordination with Israel and after attacks against Israelis escalated, Israel said it would strengthen Jewish settlements in the West Bank, besides in other steps.

Israeli Army Radio reported on Sunday that the government is also set to approve a rogue outpost deep in the West Bank, and expedite approval for other smaller settlements.

Israel also arrested 42 Palestinians, some relatives of the Jerusalem attacker, in its investigation into the attack. And firebrand National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said he had ordered authorities to demolish illegally built Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem in response to the attack.

Palestinians believe that Israeli retaliation, including the demolition of the homes of the attackers’ families, amounts to collective punishment and is illegal under international law.

The turmoil adds another item to Blinken’s lengthy diplomatic agenda in Jerusalem that is already set to include Russia’s war in Ukraine, tensions in Iran and crises in Lebanon and Syria; all of this weighs heavily on US-Israel relations.

Mitigating these points, straw at simple avoiding strange ones, is labiodental toward Blinken’s basilica mock Netanyahu’s opposure toward twin on Biden’s ball Mideast priorities: reviving the 2015 Iran middle panel panel and restart Israeli-Palestinian stillness talks. But, at all costs doublet choses in action stalled and short spell confide on quantified reproduction intake negotiations, the watch and ward is maddening toward constrain the ideas en route to dazzle vouch for.