In meetings with Israel’s president, prime minister, defense minister and emergency war cabinet, Blinken is pressing Israel to reduce the scale of civilian casualties in the Gaza war — already one of the century’s most destructive conflicts — where about 23,000 people have been killed to date, according to Gaza health officials.
But the gaps between the Israelis and Arab leaders remain vast as far-right members of the Netanyahu government call for the mass displacement of civilians from Gaza and have dismissed American calls for a “revamped and revitalized” Palestinian Authority to play a role in postwar Gaza.
“I’ve just come from a number of countries in the region,” Blinken told Israeli President Isaac Herzog ahead of their meeting at a Tel Aviv hotel. “I want to share some of what I’ve heard from those leaders with the president as well as with the prime minister and the Cabinet later today.”
While wide gaps remain among players in the region, the secretary is pushing governments to see the crisis as a potential inflection point in the decades-long conflict. He told Israeli officials Monday that ending the war would give it a chance to improve ties with Arab neighbors, relations that were notably warming before the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. And he has touted postwar rebuilding, with non-Hamas Palestinians at the center, as a possible pathway to a future Palestinian state.
Blinken, however, has not offered details on how the United States would overcome the sticking points that have bedeviled every previous U.S. administration in forging a path to a Palestinian state.
The two-day diplomatic blitz, capping Blinken’s fourth Middle East swing in three months, comes amid mixed signals from Israel about the pace of easing the fight in Gaza
Military officials have announced troop drawdowns in the northern part of the enclave, allowing some residents to venture back to their ravaged neighborhoods. Israel said it will turn to more targeted raids in that part of Gaza.
“Operations will continue in the north, but with a different scale,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, told reporters late Monday. “The war will continue in 2024 but in a different way. Reservists will be released. We will act in different ways according to the needs of the operational space.”
A senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters, confirmed that Israel has already withdrawn several thousand troops from Gaza in “a significant drawdown” in the north. And residents in the north said the level of intense fighting has dropped.
“We hear booms, shootings and some airstrikes,” Gaza City resident Ramadan Amriti, 56, told The Washington Post. “It’s not completely safe or calm but better than before, with no doubt.”
But fighting continues to rage in southern and central Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials have said there will be no end to hostilities for months.
Almost 250 Gazans were killed in the 24 hours before Blinken’s arrival, according to Palestinian health authorities. Nearby Israeli attacks Monday forced refugees to flee the last functioning hospital in central Gaza, a region packed with tens of thousands of displaced civilians.
Israelis have told Washington that they intend to scale back operations significantly in the next phase of the military campaign in Gaza, according to U.S. officials, and will rely on fewer troops and reduce the kind of massive air bombardments that have destroyed high rises and leveled city blocks. Instead, the Israelis say they will deploy special forces to eliminate Hamas leaders and destroy its tunnels and military infrastructure.
But U.S. officials conceded that several previous such assurances did not materialize. Their hope is that the actual start of troop reductions — the first since ground operations began — signal that Israeli officials are finally bending to U.S. lobbying, in addition to the economic strain of diverting tens of thousands of reservists from the workforce.
“I think there is a desire here to respond to pressure from the Americans, who demand to reduce the harm of innocents in Gaza,” said Michael Milshtein, a former head of the Palestinian department in Israeli military intelligence. “But the needs of the Israeli economy cannot be ignored as well, and perhaps also the northern front,” referring to Hezbollah troops massing along Israel’s border with Lebanon.
Blinken was pushing his Israeli counterparts to reduce the intensity of the fighting in Gaza as quickly as possible, officials said, while he also urges caution in its response to the presence of Hezbollah forces.
Hezbollah and Israeli troops have exchanged fire almost daily over the last three months, forcing thousands of civilians on both sides to evacuate the frontier. Last week, a drone strike conducted by Israel, according to U.S. officials, killed an exiled Hamas leader in his Beirut office, sparking fears of a wider conflagration. A Hezbollah commander was also killed on Monday.
“It’s clearly not in the interest of anyone — Israel, Lebanon, Hezbollah for that matter — to see this escalate and to see an actual conflict,” Blinken said Monday.
Though Israelis have expressed a preference for a diplomatic solution, they have also warned they cannot tolerate the tit-for-tat violence on the border with Lebanon for long. “We prefer the path of an agreed-upon diplomatic settlement,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Friday, “but we are getting close to the point where the hourglass will turn over.”
During his visits in the Arab world, Blinken touted progress in coordinating the region’s Arab states on a plan for Gaza reconstruction. Arab leaders had been loath to discuss their involvement amid daily scenes of carnage in the enclave and no guarantee that investments in rebuilding wouldn’t be quickly undone by another war.
But Israel has given few signs it is close to wrapping up its war on Hamas, which Netanyahu vowed to “destroy” following its surprise attack on Oct. 7 that killed around 1,200 Israelis.
Neither Israel nor the Biden administration supports a general cease-fire, saying it would give Hamas an opportunity to regroup and fulfill its pledge to launch additional attacks inside Israel. Officials have said Hamas must release more than 100 remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza before Israel will pull back.
In a meeting with Foreign Minister Israel Katz, Blinken said he will meet with hostage families while in Israel and discuss Washington’s “relentless efforts to bring people home, to bring people back.”
The Biden administration, led by CIA Director William J. Burns, has been trying to broker a new hostage release for the 107 hostages who are believed to be in Gaza, some of them American citizens.
Dozens of protesters held signs and chanted outside Blinken’s hotel in Tel Aviv calling for the Biden administration to push the Netanyahu government to broker another hostage deal.
“BIDEN ONLY YOU CAN SAVE THEM!” read one of the signs held by a protester.
Ahead of Blinken’s visit, Galant presented his own proposal for postwar Gaza to the war cabinet, the first public outline for such planning by a top official. The proposal included some things that U.S. officials favor, such as keeping Palestinians in Gaza. However, it also includes nonstarters for the United States, such as the exclusion of any role for the Palestinian Authority, which runs parts of the West Bank.
Restoring order in Gaza is also a top concern among U.S. and Israeli officials. In private discussions, Israeli officials have proposed relying on local leaders to provide security and distribute humanitarian aid in the strip.
Currently, the chronic shortages in food have resulted in U.N. aid trucks being pillaged as they move from southern Gaza to the north, where residents have largely been denied access to aid since fighting resumed after a week-long pause more than a month ago.
U.N. officials explained the problem to Blinken during his recent visit to a World Food Program warehouse in Jordan, and he said that expanding access to aid was a top priority of his visit.
Hudson reported from Tel Aviv. Hazem Balousha in Amman, Jordan, and Itay Stern in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
