American diplomacy chief Antony Blinken will meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday as part of an intensive trip focused on avoiding regional expansion of the Gaza conflict before traveling to Israel.
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This tour – his fourth since the devastating war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas began on October 7 – has already taken him to Turkey, Greece, Jordan, Qatar and, on Monday, the United Arab Emirates.
Blinken spoke with United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi about the situation in the war-torn Gaza Strip and Sudan, according to State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
He “emphasized the importance of urgently responding to humanitarian needs in Gaza” and thanked the Emirates for “their important contribution to providing humanitarian assistance to civilians” in Gaza, the spokesman said.
Mr. Blinken, according to the spokesman, emphasized the need to “prevent further spread of the conflict” and recalled Washington’s commitment to “ensuring a lasting peace that guarantees the security of Israel and promotes the creation of an independent Palestinian state.”
Mr. Blinken is scheduled to travel to Israel in the evening for talks on Tuesday that promise to be tense, then to the occupied West Bank and Egypt on Wednesday.
“This is a moment of deep tension in the region. “This is a conflict that could easily metastasize and cause even more uncertainty and more suffering,” Blinken warned Sunday evening in Doha, Qatar, as the war entered its fourth month.
The goal of Mr. Blinken's trip, according to American officials, is threefold: to prevent escalation and, in particular, to prevent tensions between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, from spiraling out of control, and to push Israel into a new one phase His military operation in Gaza cost fewer Palestinian lives and created a “difficult” post-war dialogue.
Given the death toll in the Gaza Strip, which, according to the Hamas government, is now over 22,800, the US Secretary of State believes it is “particularly important that (military) operations, as they continue, are aimed at protecting civilians and humanitarian aid.” The aid should benefit the people who need it and not the other way around.
Mr. Blinken is also eager to explore how each country could contribute in the postwar period, whether in terms of Gaza's reconstruction or its governance.
Yemen
In Saudi Arabia, talks in the historic city of Al-Ula between Mr. Blinken and Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de facto ruler, are also expected to include attacks by Yemen's Houthis on merchant ships in the Red Sea in support of the Palestinians.
A US-led coalition protecting shipping in the Red Sea has called on the Iran-aligned Houthis to stop attacks that disrupt global trade or threaten “consequences.”
The issue is sensitive for the Saudis, who are intervening in Yemen's civil war to support the government against Houthi rebels while a ceasefire negotiated in April 2022 expired in October even as the country experiences relative lull.
Furthermore, a resumption of talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia on a possible normalization of their relations under the auspices of the United States is out of the question in the current context, but the issue still remains in the background.
Before the war broke out between Israel and Hamas, there had been progress in negotiations on both sides, and Mr. Blinken had even planned to visit the kingdom to hold extensive talks on the issue.
But the United States has not lost sight of the long-term goal, and the meeting with Mohammed bin Salman was intended to sound out the Saudis, according to a senior American official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Gulf kingdom, guardian of Islam's first holy sites, did not abide by the 2020 Abraham Accords brokered by the United States, which allowed its neighbors Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Morocco, to establish official relations with Israel.