Blinken will leave on Thursday night for stops in several capitals in the Middle East, including Israel, as risks of regional conflict grow.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will depart on Thursday for the Middle East, as part of the United States diplomatic consultations on Israel’s war on Gaza, the Reuters news agency reported on Wednesday.
REUTERS: 17 employees of US President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign warned in a letter that he would lose voters due to his position on the war between Israel and Gaza.
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— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) January 4, 2024
Reuters cited a US official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, as saying that US diplomatic envoy Amos Hochstein will also travel to Israel to work to soothe tensions between Israel and the Lebanese Resistance Movement Hezbollah.
Blinken will leave on Thursday night “for stops in a number of capitals, including Israel,” the official reportedly said, without providing further details.
GERMAN FOREIGN MINISTRY: German citizens must leave Lebanon and should not travel there.
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— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) January 3, 2024
According to Reuters, US President Joe Biden spoke by phone to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent days about issues related to the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza and the release of Israeli captives currently held by Hamas.
Blinken’s visit comes after the killing of Hamas deputy head Saleh al-Arouri by an Israeli drone in the Beirut southern suburbs on Tuesday.
KIRBY: US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby:
We believe that the IDF can undermine Hamas’s ability to launch attacks inside Israel.
Hamas still has significant capabilities in the Gaza Strip.
We do not believe that a military attack will destroy Hamas’s ideology… pic.twitter.com/OpvjU3PtAi
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) January 3, 2024
Less than 24 hours later, a terror attack hit the Iranian city of Kerman during a commemoration in honor of the late General Qassem Soleimani, killing over 100 people.
On Wednesday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah warned that his group would “fight without restraint” if Israel wages war on Lebanon.
Nasrallah is aware that Israel is trying to provoke Lebanon and Iran into an all-out war, with the hope of roping in the Americans. But the Lebanese leader also understands that Hezbollah must respond.https://t.co/ozi82ATayF pic.twitter.com/PJRljCEW3G
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) January 3, 2024
Meanwhile, Israel continues to pound Gaza by air, land, and sea for the 90th day in a row.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 22,313 Palestinians have been killed, and 57,296 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
“In the end, love will return in a different way,” Kafka wrote. He is right. But hate, too, tends to return as well, manifesting itself in myriad ways.
Read the latest editorial by @RamzyBaroud https://t.co/pjeR9yY3bT pic.twitter.com/8nHFoM901I
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) January 3, 2024
Palestinian and international estimates say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
