U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Sunday that Washington opposes the forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza or the occupied West Bank, as he hoped to kickstart talks on Gaza’s future.
Quick Read
- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, affirming U.S. opposition to the forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
- The meeting focused on Jordan’s concerns about the impact of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has caused widespread destruction and a humanitarian crisis.
- Blinken emphasized the need to protect Palestinian civilians from extremist settler violence in the West Bank.
- The ongoing conflict in Gaza and the West Bank has resulted in significant displacement and violence.
- King Abdullah urged the U.S. to play a significant role in achieving an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, highlighting the severe consequences of the continued conflict.
- Palestinian health officials reported a high number of casualties in Gaza due to Israel’s military actions.
- Blinken’s regional tour is in response to escalating tensions, including incidents involving Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi militants.
- The tour includes visits to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, discussing regional security and efforts to release hostages held by Hamas.
- The U.S. seeks cooperation from Arab states in Gaza’s reconstruction, aiming to remove Hamas from power.
- Palestinians in a displaced persons camp in Rafah expressed hope for a two-state solution, aligning with U.N. resolutions and U.S. policy.
- In Amman, Blinken visited a World Food Programme warehouse and discussed maintaining and expanding aid routes into Gaza amidst the worsening humanitarian situation.
Reuters has the story:
U.S. opposes displacement of Palestinians, Blinken assures Jordan’s King
Newslooks- AMMAN/DOHA, Jan 7 (Reuters) –
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Sunday that Washington opposes the forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza or the occupied West Bank, as he hoped to kickstart talks on Gaza’s future.
The King had raised Jordan’s concerns over displacement in the meeting, according to a palace statement, as Israel pushes on with its military campaign that has turned much of Gaza to rubble and left its 2.3 million residents on the verge of starvation, according to aid workers.
In his meeting with King Abdullah in Amman, Blinken “stressed U.S. opposition to forcible displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and the critical need to protect Palestinian civilians in the West Bank from extremist settler violence,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.
Most of Gaza’s residents have been displaced by the conflict, and violence has also flared in the West Bank, including in a deadly clash in the city of Jenin on Sunday.
King Abdullah told Blinken that Washington had a major role to play in pressuring Israel into an immediate ceasefire, and warned of the “catastrophic repercussions” of the continuation of the war in Gaza, which began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostage.
Israel’s subsequent air and ground assault had killed 22,722 Palestinians by Saturday, according to Palestinian health officials.
Blinken is touring the region amid heightened fears Israel’s offensive against Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza will spark a broader regional conflagration.
The trip comes after a drone strike in Beirut killed a senior Hamas leader and Israel exchanged fire with Iran-backed militia Hezbollah across its northern border with Lebanon. Washington is also rallying allies to deter attacks on Red Sea shipping by Houthi militants who control most of Yemen.
Blinken arrived in Jordan late on Saturday and met King Abdullah on Sunday before traveling to Qatar for meetings with Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, who also serves as foreign minister.
In Doha, Blinken will discuss efforts to free the more than 100 hostages still believed to be held by Hamas after an earlier agreement mediated by Qatar broke down, a senior State Department official said.
Blinken will end the day in the United Arab Emirates.
Washington wants Israel’s Arab neighbors to play a role in reconstruction, governance and security in Gaza in expectation that Israel’s assault will eliminate Hamas, which has run the territory since 2007.
The U.S. delegation aims to gather Arab states’ views on the future of Gaza before taking those positions to Israel, the U.S. official said, acknowledging that stances would be far apart.
HUMANITARIAN CRISIS
In a camp for displaced people in Rafah, southern Gaza, some Palestinians called on Blinken to live up to U.S. calls for a two-state solution to the conflict.
“We hope that it is a visit for our benefit, for peace’s benefit and for the benefit of establishing a Palestinian state next to a Jewish state, in line with U.N. resolutions … and with what America has been calling for,” said Moussa al-Atawneh, a 76-year-old displaced man.
In Amman, Blinken visited a World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse storing canned food bound for Gaza.
WFP acting country director for Palestine Laura Turner said ahead of meeting Blinken that he should push to halt the conflict and for Israel to open border crossings into northern Gaza.
“That’s where the population is that we haven’t been able to access for six weeks and we’re most concerned about,” Turner said, adding that aid sent north from southern Gaza was being taken en route by other Palestinians also in dire need of food.
Blinken said the U.S. was working to keep aid routes into the strip open and to multiply them.
“We are intensely focused on the very difficult and indeed deteriorating food situation for men, women and children in Gaza, and it’s something we’re working on 24/7,” Blinken said.
Israel signals it has wrapped up major combat in northern Gaza as the war enters its fourth month
Quick Read
- The Israeli military announced the end of major combat operations in northern Gaza, claiming to have dismantled Hamas’ military infrastructure there.
- Israel’s focus shifts to central and southern Gaza, with no specific details on troop deployments in the north.
- The announcement precedes U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Israel, amid U.S. calls for Israel to reduce its intense military offensive in Gaza.
- Israel’s military activity has recently concentrated on southern Gaza, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasizes the war will continue until Hamas is eliminated, hostages are returned, and Gaza is no longer a threat to Israel.
- The war began with a Hamas attack on Israel, leading to numerous casualties and hostages.
- Israeli retaliation in Gaza has resulted in over 22,800 Palestinian deaths, with a high proportion of women and minors among the casualties.
- An Israeli airstrike in Rafah killed two journalists, including Hamza Dahdouh, with Al Jazeera condemning the attack and calling for accountability.
- Further airstrikes in southern Gaza have resulted in additional deaths and injuries.
- Israeli forces are advancing into central Gaza, with evacuation warnings issued in Deir al-Balah.
- Doctors Without Borders is evacuating staff from a hospital in Deir al-Balah due to nearby combat.
- Despite the scaling down in northern Gaza, sporadic fighting and rocket launches are expected.
- Israeli forces plan a different approach in southern Gaza, citing the discovery of extensive tunnels under Khan Younis.
- U.S. Secretary of State Blinken, on his Mideast tour, advocates for scaled-back combat and increased aid to Gaza, with differing views on post-war governance.
- Cross-border tensions with Lebanon’s Hezbollah intensify, complicating efforts to prevent regional conflict.
The Associated Press has the story:
Israel signals it has wrapped up major combat in northern Gaza as the war enters its fourth month
Newslook- JERUSALEM (AP) —
The Israeli military signaled that it has wrapped up major combat in northern Gaza, saying it has completed dismantling Hamas’ military infrastructure there, as the war against the militant group entered its fourth month Sunday.
Israel did not address troop deployments in northern Gaza going forward. Military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said late Saturday that forces would focus on the central and southern parts of the territory and strengthen defenses along the Israel-Gaza border fence.
The announcement came ahead of a visit to Israel by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who on Sunday was in Qatar, a key mediator. Biden administration officials have urged Israel to wind down its blistering air and ground offensive in Gaza and shift to more targeted attacks against Hamas leaders.
In recent weeks, Israel has scaled back its military assault in northern Gaza and pressed its offensive in the south, where most of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians are squeezed into smaller areas in a humanitarian disaster while being pounded by Israeli airstrikes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists the war will not end until the objectives of eliminating Hamas, getting Israel’s hostages returned and ensuring that Gaza won’t be a threat to Israel are met.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel in which the militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took some 250 people hostage.
Israel’s retaliation has killed more than 22,800 Palestinians and wounded more than 58,000, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The death toll does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Health officials say about two-thirds of those killed have been women and minors. Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the group operates in heavily populated residential areas.
An airstrike near the southern city of Rafah killed two journalists on Sunday, including Hamza Dahdouh, the oldest son of Wael Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s chief correspondent in Gaza, the Arabic channel and local medical officials said. Al Jazeera broadcast footage of Dahdouh, weeping and holding his son’s hand, before walking away in a daze. Israel’s military had no immediate comment.
Al Jazeera strongly condemned the killings and other “brutal attacks against journalists and their families” by Israeli forces, and urged the International Criminal Court, governments and human rights groups to hold Israel accountable.
Dahdouh previously lost his wife, two children and a grandchild in an Oct. 26 airstrike, and was wounded in an Israeli strike last month that killed a co-worker.
“The world is blind to what’s happening in Gaza Strip,” Dahdouh said, blinking back tears.
Another airstrike hit a house between Khan Younis and the southern city of Rafah, killing at least seven people whose bodies were taken to the nearby European Hospital, according to an Associated Press journalist at the facility. One man hurried in carrying a baby, and later walked the blanket-wrapped child to the morgue.
“Everything happening here is outside the realms of law, outside the realms of reason. Our brains can’t fully comprehend all this that is happening to us,” said a grieving relative, Inas Abu al-Najja, her wavering voice rising. Men worked the rubble with picks and bare hands.
On Sunday, officials at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis received the bodies of 18 people, including 12 children, killed in an Israeli strike late Saturday. More than 50 people were injured in the strike on a home in the Khan Younis refugee camp, set up decades ago to house refugees from the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.
Israeli forces pushed deeper into the central city of Deir al-Balah, where residents in several neighborhoods were warned that they must evacuate.
The international medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by the acronym MSF, said it was evacuating its medical staff from Deir al-Balah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital.
A bullet penetrated a wall of the hospital’s intensive care unit on Friday, and “drone attacks and sniper fire were just a few hundred meters from the hospital” over the past couple of days, said Carolina Lopez, the group’s emergency coordinator there. She said the hospital received between 150 and 200 injured people daily in recent weeks.
The head of the hospital, hosting a U.N. delegation, warned that “today, we are on the verge of a true catastrophe.” Without health care, residents “will be left in the streets to meet their death,” Dr. Iyad Abu Zaher said. The U.N. urged the protection of health workers across Gaza.
Hagari, the military spokesman, said scattered fighting in northern Gaza was to be expected, along with rockets sporadically being launched from there toward Israel. He said Hamas militants “without a framework and without commanders” were still present. The military has said it has killed more than 8,000 Hamas fighters, without presenting evidence.
Hagari said Israeli forces would act differently in the south than in northern Gaza, where heavy bombardment and ground combat leveled entire neighborhoods.
He said urban refugee camps targeted by the military are packed with gunmen and that “an underground city of sprawling tunnels” was discovered underneath Khan Younis. Echoing Israeli political leaders, he said fighting will continue throughout 2024.
In addition to U.S. appeals for scaling back high-intensity combat, Blinken on his fourth Mideast trip in three months is calling for more aid to reach Gaza and urging Israel’s leaders to come up with a post-war vision for the besieged territory.
Two U.S. senators who inspected aid deliveries over the weekend described a slow and cumbersome process largely due to Israeli inspections of cargo trucks, with seemingly arbitrary rejections of vital humanitarian equipment.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration and Netanyahu remain far apart on who should run the territory after the war, with the Israeli leader rejecting the Washington-floated idea of having a reformed Palestinian Authority, an autonomy government in parts of the occupied West Bank, eventually administer Gaza.
An escalation of cross-border fighting between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah has complicated the U.S. push to prevent a regional conflict. Hezbollah described Saturday’s rockets as an “initial response” to the targeted killing of a top Hamas leader in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut last week, presumed to have been carried out by Israel.
