The head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, landed this Sunday (29) in Egypt for a brief visit to the Middle East, in the midst of an escalation of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
Blinken will meet Egypt’s president and foreign minister. He will travel to Jerusalem and Ramallah on Monday and Tuesday.
The escalation of violence is likely to dominate discussions, as the Egyptian government is a historic mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The trip, planned for several months, comes at a time when tensions in the conflict have escalated considerably in a matter of days.
On Friday, a 21-year-old Palestinian killed seven people outside a synagogue in East Jerusalem. On Saturday, another attack carried out by a Palestinian teenager left two injured.
The two attacks followed an Israeli operation in the Jenin refugee camp, in the occupied West Bank, in which nine Palestinians were killed.
Israel claimed that the targets of the incursion were Islamic Jihad militants.
In response, Palestinian groups launched rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory. In the sequence, the army of the Hebrew State bombed the Palestinian territory.
On Sunday, the Palestinian health ministry said Israeli guards killed a Palestinian near a settlement in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli army said the man was armed.
Blinken will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and will ask “in general terms that measures be taken to reduce tensions,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said. , while condemning the “horrible” attack in front of the synagogue.
But the US Secretary of State’s room for maneuver seems limited, taking into account that the ways to resolve the conflict are stagnant.
Analysts interviewed by the AFP do not believe in many diplomatic advances. Washington is likely to confine itself to reiterating support for the two-state solution.
“I think the best it can do is for things to stabilize, to avoid a repeat of May 2021,” said Aaron David Miller, a former US government adviser and analyst at the Carnegie Foundation of Washington, in a reference to the latest escalation. of violence between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.
Ghaith Al Omari, an analyst at the Washington Institute, considers that “the visit does not point to any change in the American position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, but he predicts that “the conversation (with Mahmud Abbas) will not be pleasant”.
– Avalanche of visits –
Blinken’s trip to Israel reflects Washington’s willingness to quickly strengthen relations with Netanyahu, who leads the most right-wing government in the country’s history and whose relations with the Democratic administration of Joe Biden have been strained recently.
The visit follows a trip by White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
“I’ve never seen so many high-ranking visits during another administration”, points out Aaron David Miller.
“It is unprecedented”, he adds, before mentioning the possibility of Netanyahu traveling to Washington in February.
CIA Director William Burns also recently visited the region.
Blinken will insist on the “importance of maintaining the historic status quo” at the Mosque Square in East Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest in Judaism (called the Temple Mount), located in the occupied and annexed Palestinian part of the city. by Israel.
The Abraham Accords, a process of normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab countries, will also be among the topics covered.
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