New tour of the Middle East by a senior White House official
Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States and Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk traveled to Belgium, Israel, the West Bank, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan on Monday evening. The White House reported this on Tuesday. Today in Brussels he will brief NATO allies and European Union partners on a coordinated approach to the current situation in the Middle East, focusing on the significant expansion of humanitarian aid to Gaza, economic pressure on Hamas and other terrorist groups, and the Focus on calls for immediate assistance Release the hostages of various nationalities still held by Hamas.
“In Israel, [McGurk] will address Israel’s security needs, the need to protect civilians during military operations, as well as ongoing efforts to release hostages and the need to contain violent extremist settlers in the West Bank,” the White House statement said In recent days, two aspects have been included in the official discourse that justify unconditional support for Israel: the need to protect the civilian population and the equally necessary cessation of settler activities. In the West Bank, where there were already violent incidents against the Palestinian population before the war against Hamas in Gaza began. In the West Bank, McGurk will support Mahmoud Abbas as a representative of the Palestinian Authority, and both will address the “aspirations of Palestinians to live in their own state with the same levels of freedom, security and dignity” in reference to the two-state solution .