Blinken urges calm, reaffirms ‘ironclad’ US support for Israel
Al JazeeraJan 30, 2023
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued his brief visit to the Middle East on Monday by meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and publicly calling for Israel and Palestine to "take urgent steps to restore calm, to de-escalate,” as tensions have recently flared.
In some of the worst violence the region has witnessed in years, 10 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli raid of a refugee camp last Thursday. Over the weekend, a Palestinian gunman killed at least seven Israelis outside of a synagogue, and a teenager shot and wounded two Israelis in Jerusalem.
If Blinken doesn’t favor Israel over the Palestinians, he has a funny way of showing it. He offered condolences to Israeli victims but ignored the Palestinian victims of last week’s violence. He said the US wants a "two-state solution," but failed to criticize the Israeli policy of building settlements where a Palestinian state would go. Maybe the US should focus less on other regional actors like Iran and actually put in the work it will take to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
The deaths at the Palestinian refugee camp were the result of a military raid to weed out terrorists, unlike the heinous attacks on civilians carried out by Palestinians and celebrated by their leadership. Until Palestinians acknowledge Israel’s right to exist — and this concept might be forwarded by more Arab countries joining the Abraham Accords — it’ll be difficult to change the status quo.