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JERUSALEM – Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israeli leaders in back-to-back meetings on Tuesday to limit civilian casualties in Gaza, avoid an all-out war with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and get serious about planning for what comes after the final end of the fighting comes.
Blinken, the top diplomat from Israel's main ally, is laying out a plan for Gaza's future to Israeli leaders at his meetings with leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Greece and the Turkey based in Israel before his arrival.
In meetings with the Israeli president, prime minister, defense minister and emergency war cabinet, Blinken is urging Israel to reduce the level of civilian casualties in the Gaza war – already one of the most destructive conflicts of the century – which has killed about 23,000 people so far, according to the Gaza Strip health authorities.
But the divide between Israelis and Arab leaders remains wide, with far-right members of Netanyahu's government calling for the mass expulsion of civilians from Gaza and American calls for a “renewed and revitalized” Palestinian Authority to play a role in post-war Gaza. have rejected.
The killing of the Hamas leader in Lebanon signals a turnaround in Israel's war effort
“I just came from several countries in the region,” Blinken told Israeli President Isaac Herzog before their meeting at a Tel Aviv hotel. “I would like to share some of what I heard from these leaders with the President, as well as the Prime Minister and Cabinet, later today.”
While major differences remain between actors in the region, the minister is urging governments to view the crisis as a potential turning point in the decades-long conflict. He told Israeli officials on Monday that ending the war would provide a chance to improve relations with Arab neighbors, relations that had improved markedly before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. And he has touted postwar reconstruction, with non-Hamas Palestinians at the center, as a possible path to a future Palestinian state.
But Blinken has offered no details about how the United States would overcome the sticking points that have plagued every previous U.S. administration in the quest for a Palestinian state.
The two-day diplomatic blitz, capping Blinken's fourth Middle East deployment in three months, comes amid mixed signals from Israel about the pace of easing the fighting in Gaza
Military officials have announced a troop withdrawal in the northern part of the enclave to allow some residents to return to their devastated neighborhoods. Israel said it would carry out more targeted attacks in that part of the Gaza Strip.
“Operations continue in the north, but on 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 are released. We will approach it in different ways depending on the requirements of the area of operation.”
A senior US official confirmed that Israel had already withdrawn several thousand troops from Gaza, leading to a “significant withdrawal” from the north. And residents in the north said the level of intense fighting had decreased.
“We hear bangs, shootings and some airstrikes,” Ramadan Amriti, 56, from Gaza City, told The Washington Post. “It’s not entirely safe or quiet, but without a doubt it’s better than before.”
But fighting continues in the southern and central Gaza Strip, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials have said hostilities will end within the next few months.
According to Palestinian health authorities, nearly 250 Gazans were killed in the 24 hours before Blinken's arrival. Israeli strikes nearby on Monday forced refugees to flee the last functioning hospital in the central Gaza Strip, a region home to tens of thousands of displaced civilians.
Displaced residents flee the last hospital in central Gaza as fighting approaches
U.S. officials say the Israelis have told Washington that in the next phase of the military operation in Gaza they intend to significantly scale back their operations, rely on fewer troops and reduce the type of massive airstrikes that have destroyed high-rises and leveled cities have blocks. Instead, the Israelis say they will use special forces to eliminate Hamas leaders and destroy their tunnels and military infrastructure.
However, U.S. officials acknowledged that several previous such assurances had not materialized. They hope that the actual start of troop reductions – the first since ground operations began – is a signal that Israeli officials are finally bowing to US lobbying, on top of the economic strain caused by the exodus of tens of thousands of reservists from the workforce.
“I think there is a desire here to respond to pressure from the Americans who are demanding that the harm to innocents in Gaza be reduced,” said Michael Milshtein, former head of the Palestinian division of Israeli military intelligence. “But the needs of the Israeli economy and perhaps the northern front cannot be ignored either,” referring to the Hezbollah troops gathering along Israel’s border with Lebanon.
Officials said Blinken was urging his Israeli counterparts to reduce the intensity of fighting in Gaza as quickly as possible, while urging caution in responding to the presence of Hezbollah troops.
There have been almost daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli troops over the past three months, forcing thousands of civilians on both sides to evacuate the border. Last week, a drone strike carried out by Israel killed an exiled Hamas leader in his office in Beirut, according to U.S. officials, sparking fears of a wider conflagration. A Hezbollah commander was also killed on Monday.
“It is clearly not in the interests of anyone — Israel, Lebanon or Hezbollah — for this to escalate and result in an actual conflict,” Blinken said Monday.
Although the Israelis have expressed their preference for a diplomatic solution, they have also warned that they cannot tolerate violence on the border with Lebanon for long. “We prefer the path of an amicable diplomatic solution,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Friday, “but we are approaching the point where the hourglass will turn.”
During his visits to the Arab world, Blinken touted progress in coordinating the region's Arab states on a plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip. Arab leaders had shied away from discussing their involvement because bloodshed was daily in the enclave and there was no guarantee that investments in reconstruction would not be quickly wiped out by another war.
But Israel has given little sign that it is close to ending its war against Hamas, which Netanyahu vowed to “destroy” after the surprise attack on October 7 that killed about 1,200 Israelis.
Neither Israel nor the Biden administration is in favor of a general ceasefire, saying it would give Hamas a chance to regroup and fulfill its promise to launch more attacks inside Israel. Officials said Hamas must release more than 100 remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza before Israel withdraws.
In a meeting with Secretary of State Israel Katz, Blinken said he would meet with hostage families in Israel and discuss Washington's “tireless efforts to bring people home, to bring people back.”
The Biden administration, led by CIA Director William J. Burns, has tried to negotiate a new release of the 107 hostages Hostages believed to be in Gaza, some of them American citizens.
Dozens of protesters held signs and shouted signs outside Blinken's hotel in Tel Aviv, calling on the Biden administration to pressure the Netanyahu government to negotiate another hostage deal.
“BIDEN, ONLY YOU CAN SAVE HER!” read one of the signs held by a protester.
Before Blinken's visit, Galant presented his own proposal for postwar Gaza to the War Cabinet, the first public draft of such planning by a top official. The proposal included some things that U.S. officials support, such as allowing Palestinians to remain in the Gaza Strip. But it also includes non-starters for the United States, such as excluding any role for the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank.
Restoring order in Gaza is also a major concern for U.S. and Israeli officials. In private discussions, Israeli officials have suggested relying on local leaders to ensure security and distribute humanitarian aid in the Strip.
Currently, chronic food shortages are leading to UN aid trucks being looted on their way from the southern Gaza Strip to the north, where residents have been largely 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 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.