US Secretary of State Antony Blinken again called on Israelis and Palestinians to avoid “inflaming tensions” immediately after arriving in Tel Aviv on Monday from Cairo.
This visit, the second leg of a whirlwind Middle Eastern tour that began in Egypt on Sunday, was planned for a long time but has taken a different turn with the spiral of Israeli-Palestinian violence in recent days.
Deaths on the Palestinian and Israeli sides have multiplied: attacks, shootings, air raids and sanctions continue to respond despite international calls for “restraint”.
“It is everyone’s responsibility to take action to ease tensions rather than stoking them, to work towards one day people being fearless in their communities, homes and places of worship.” , Blinken said in a statement at Tel Aviv airport.
“This is the only way to end the wave of violence that has claimed too many lives: too many Israeli lives, too many Palestinian lives,” he added.
Blinken is due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday in Ramallah, in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
“I want to be able to hear what the people who are affected on a daily basis (by the conflict) have to say,” the American official told the Saudi channel al-Arabiya.
Outbursts of violence
In the wake of anti-Israeli attacks, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, announced measures aimed at punishing the relatives of the perpetrators of the attacks.
On Sunday, Israeli forces sealed off the home of the family of a Palestinian man who killed six Israeli men and a Ukrainian woman on Friday in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian part of the Israeli-occupied Holy City, with a view to destroying it. The home of a Palestinian man who injured two Israelis, a father and his son, also in East Jerusalem, was also to be sealed off on Saturday.
Israeli guards on Sunday killed a Palestinian in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. On Monday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian in Hebron in the West Bank, according to Palestinian authorities.
The anti-Israel attacks came after Israel’s deadliest raid in years in the West Bank with ten Palestinians killed in Jenin, followed by rocket fire from Gaza into Israel and retaliatory Israeli strikes.
Egyptian interlocutor
Mr. Blinken began his tour in Egypt, a country whose diplomacy and especially the intelligence services are regularly called upon to intervene in the Palestinian question.
The first Arab country to have signed peace with Israel in 1979, and a neighboring state in the Gaza Strip under Israeli blockade for more than 15 years, Egypt receives Israeli heads of government as well as the leaders of the various Palestinian parties.
Again, the Egyptian presidency assured that “Egypt had made efforts in recent days to try to control the outbreak of tensions”.
If the United States and Egypt, one of the main recipients of American military aid, are important diplomatic actors, the fact remains that for the experts, the room for maneuver of Mr. Blinken seems limited.
Washington has condemned an “appalling” attack in East Jerusalem and Mr. Blinken will enjoin MM. Netanyahu and Abbas to “take urgent steps towards de-escalation” according to the State Department.
But, in private, American officials do not hide their frustration with the escalation and impasse in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict finds itself.
If little progress is expected on the de-escalation front, Washington is above all trying to reconnect with Mr. Netanyahu, according to analysts.
Officials have recently succeeded in Jerusalem and some experts suggest a possible arrival of Mr. Netanyahu at the White House in February.