Matthew Lee
AP / January 30, 2023
JERUSALEM – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israel and the Palestinians on Monday to ease tensions amid a spike in violence that has put the region on edge. The bloodshed has alarmed the Biden administration as it attempts to find common ground with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new right-wing government.
Speaking on his arrival at Israel’s international airport near Tel Aviv after a brief visit to Egypt, Blinken said he had come at “a pivotal moment” and condemned Palestinian attacks that have targeted Israeli citizens but also called for restraint in response, saying that all civilian casualties are deplorable.
“To take an innocent life in an act of terrorism is always a heinous crime but to target people outside their place of worship is especially shocking,” he said, referring to an attack on Friday that killed seven people, many of whom were leaving a Jerusalem synagogue.
“We condemn it in the strongest terms,” he said. “We condemn all those who celebrate these and any other acts of terrorism that take civilian lives no matter who the victim is or what they believe. Calls for vengeance against more innocent victims are not the answer. And acts of retaliatory violence against civilians are never justified.”
The latest spate of violence erupted last week with an Israeli military raid on a militant stronghold in the West Bank city of Jenin last week that killed 10 people, most of them militants, followed by the shooting in an east Jerusalem Jewish settlement that killed seven Israelis.
Blinken said it is imperative for both sides to work to de-escalate tensions that have soared since last week in what he called “a new and horrifying surge in violence” that has prompted severe responses from each.
“It is the responsibility of everyone to takes steps to calm tensions, rther to inflame them,” he said, “That is the only way to halt the rising tide of violence that has taken too many lives, too many Israelies, too many Palestinians.
On Monday, shortly before Blinken’s arrival, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in the flashpoint city of Hebron, bringing the toll of Palestinians killed in January to 35.
The violence comes after months of Israeli arrest raids in the West Bank, which were launched after a wave of Palestinians attacks against Israelis in the spring of 2022 that killed 19 people.
But it has spiked this month during the first weeks of Netanyahu’s new far-right government, which has promised to take a tough stance against the Palestinians and ramp up settlement construction.
Blinken’s trip follows visits to Israel by President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and CIA Director Willian Burns. But Blinken’s meetings will be the highest-level U.S. engagement with Netanyahu since he retook power last month and the first since the surge in violence.
The visit, which was planned before the flare-up, was already expected to be fraught with tension over differences between the Biden administration and Netanyahu’s government, which is made up of settlement supporters.
After the Jenin raid, the Palestinians said they would cancel security coordination with Israel and after attacks against Israelis intensified, Israel said it would beef up Jewish settlements in the West Bank, among other steps.
Israeli Army Radio reported late Sunday that the government was also set to approve a rogue outpost deep inside the West Bank, and speed up approval for other such small settlements.
Israel also arrested 42 Palestinians, some relatives of the Jerusalem attacker, in its investigation into the attack. And the firebrand National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said he has ordered authorities to demolish illegally built Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem in response to the attack.
The Palestinians believe the Israeli retaliation, including the demolition of homes of attackers’ families, amounts to collective punishment and is illegal under international law.
The turmoil has added yet another item to Blinken’s lengthy diplomatic agenda in Jerusalem that was already set to include Russia’s war on Ukraine, tensions with Iran and crises in Lebanon and Syria; all of which weigh heavily in the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Easing strains on those issues, or at least averting new ones, are central to Blinken’s mission despite Netanyahu’s opposition to two of Biden’s main Mideast priorities: reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But, with both of those matters stalled and little hope of any resumption in negotiations, the administration is attempting just to keep the concepts on life support.
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Israeli-Palestinian cauldron tests US as Blinken visits Matthew Lee
AP / January 30, 2023
JERUSALEM (AP) — An alarming spike in Israeli-Palestinian violence and sharp responses by both sides are testing the Biden administration as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken plunges into a cauldron of deepening mistrust and anger on visits to Israel and the West Bank this week.
What had already been expected to be a trip fraught with tension over differences between the administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new far-right government has grown significantly more complicated over the past four days with a spate of deadly incidents. Blinken’s high-wire diplomatic act begins on Monday after he completes a brief visit to Egypt that has been almost entirely overshadowed by the deteriorating security situation in Israel and the West Bank.
U.S. officials say the main theme of Blinken’s conversations with Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will be “de-escalation.” Yet Blinken will arrive in Israel just a day after Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet announced a series of punitive measures against Palestinians in response to a weekend of deadly shootings in which Palestinian attackers killed seven Israelis and wounded five others in Jerusalem. Those shootings followed a deadly Israeli raid in the West Bank on Thursday that killed 10 Palestinians, most of them militants.
The violence has made January one of the bloodiest months in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem in several years. While Blinken’s trip has been planned for several weeks and will follow visits by President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and CIA Director Willian Burns, it will be the highest-level U.S. engagement with Netanyahu since he retook power last month and the first since the surge in violence.
Already contending with the new Israeli government’s far-right policies and its opposition to a two-state resolution to the long-running conflict, U.S. officials have yet to weigh in on the retaliatory steps that include sealing and demolishing the homes of Palestinian attackers, canceling social security benefits for their families and handing out more weapons to Israeli civilians.
Perhaps most alarming was Netanyahu’s vague promise to “strengthen” Israel’s West Bank settlements, built on occupied land the Palestinians claim as the heartland of a future state. Bezalel Smotrich, an ultranationalist Cabinet minister whom Netanyahu has placed in charge of settlement policy, said he would seek new construction in a strategic section of the West Bank called E1. The U.S. has repeatedly blocked previous attempts by Israel to develop the area.
U.S. officials have, however, criticized Abbas’ decision to suspend Palestinian security cooperation with Israel in the wake of the West Bank raid.
“We want to get the parties to not cease security cooperation but to really enhance the security coordination,” said Barbara Leaf, the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East. “We are urging de-escalation and a calming of the situation.”
Ahead of his meeting with Blinken, Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel’s response is not intended to exacerbate tensions.
“We are not seeking an escalation, but we are prepared for any scenario,” Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting. “Our answer to terrorism is a heavy hand and a strong, swift and precise response.”
The Palestinians and some human rights groups believe the Israeli retaliation, including the demolition of homes of attackers’ families, amounts to collective punishment and is illegal under international law. The turmoil has added yet another item to Blinken’s lengthy diplomatic agenda that was already set to include Russia’s war on Ukraine, tensions with Iran and crises in Lebanon and Syria; all of which weigh heavily in the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Easing strains on those issues, or at least averting new ones, are central to Blinken’s mission despite Netanyahu’s opposition to two of Biden’s main Mideast priorities: reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But, with both of those matters stalled and little hope of any resumption in negotiations, the administration is attempting just to keep the concepts on life support.
In the meantime, the administration has resolved to improve ties with the Palestinians that former President Donald Trump had severed. Although it has resumed suspended U.S. assistance, its goal of re-opening the American consulate in Jerusalem to deal with Palestinian issues and the possibility of allowing the Palestinians to re-open their diplomatic mission in Washington have been blocked by a combination of Israeli opposition and U.S. legal hurdles. Blinken is unlikely to be able to offer the Palestinians any sign of progress on either of those matters, while pressing the case for further political reform in the Palestinian Authority.
The U.S. has also remained silent on Netanyahu’s proposed sweeping changes to Israel’s judicial system, which would allow lawmakers to overrule decisions by the Supreme Court. Recent weeks have seen mass protests in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv over the proposals that critics say would badly damage Israel’s democratic standing.
“It’s clear that this issue of the judicial legislation packages is one that’s sparked intense, intense discussion, debate within Israeli society,” said Leaf. “It’s clearly a measure of the vibrancy of the democracy that this is being contested so clearly up and down across segments of Israeli society.”
While she and other U.S. officials have spoken of the importance of “shared values” with Israel, they have steered clear of commenting on what they regard as a purely domestic issue.
“But now it became an issue” because of its proposed speed and scope, the public outcry, and growing concern among American Jewish leaders and members of Congress, said Eytan Gilboa, a U.S.-Israel expert at Bar-Ilan University.
“There is much confusion about what the Israeli government is up to,” he said. “If for Netanyahu Iran is the major issue, by pushing the judicial reform, he is diverting the attention from the number one, more critical issue of Iran’s nuclear program.”
AP correspondent Ilan Ben Zion contributed from Jerusalem
