GAZA STRIP (AFP) – Top United States (US) diplomat Antony Blinken made a surprise visit to the occupied West Bank yesterday, meeting the Palestinian president as Israel pressed on with its deadliest campaign yet in Gaza to destroy Hamas.
Blinken arrived in Ramallah under tight security one day after meeting in Jordan with Arab foreign ministers angered by mounting civilian deaths in Gaza, where the Hamas-run health ministry said dozens were killed in a strike on a refugee camp.
In his sit-down with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, Blinken said Palestinians in Gaza “must not be forcibly displaced”, and the pair discussed “the need to stop extremist violence against Palestinians” in the West Bank, a US State Department spokesman said.
Abbas denounced “the genocide and destruction suffered by our Palestinian people in Gaza at the hands of Israel’s war machine, with no regard for the principles of international law”, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Blinken last week told a Senate hearing Abbas’ Palestinian Authority should retake control of Gaza, even though it currently exercises only limited autonomy in parts of the West Bank and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long sought to sideline it.
The Israel-Hamas war has exacerbated tensions in the West Bank, where more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces and in settler attacks, including three young men killed by Israeli forces yesterday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
In the Gaza Strip, ground battles raged yesterday in the north, where Israeli troops tightening their encirclement of Gaza City were seen engaged in house-to-house combat as tanks and armoured bulldozers churned through the sand in footage released by the army.
