20 March 2024; MEMO: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Saudi Arabia today at the start of a tour of the Middle East to try to secure a ceasefire in Israel’s war against the Palestinians in Gaza war as increasing tension showed in Washington’s relationship with its ally Israel, Reuters has reported.
In Gaza, where hopes were dashed for a ceasefire in the nearly six-month-old Israeli offensive in time for the start of Ramadan last week, residents of Gaza City in the north described the most intense fighting for months around Al-Shifa Hospital.
Israel claimed to have killed 90 gunmen in a battle still underway there for a third day. Hamas denied that its fighters were in the hospital and said that those killed were civilians.
The resistance movement has acknowledged that a senior police commander was killed in the hospital on Monday, but says that he was responsible for civilian security and not part of its armed wing. It insists that those killed were patients and civilians.
Asked about Israel’s claim to have killed 90 gunmen, senior Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters by phone: “Previous experience has proven that [Israel] lies every time. They destroyed hospitals, killed medical staffers, media teams, and displaced people before they claimed that they killed gunmen.”
Following his visit to Saudi Arabia, where he was expected to meet de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, Blinken is due in Egypt on Thursday and Israel on Friday. The State Department announced Blinken’s planned stop in Israel only after he had arrived in Saudi Arabia. No explanation was given for why it was omitted from the initial itinerary.
Recent days have seen an intensification of fighting in northern parts of Gaza captured by Israeli forces early in the war, including Al-Shifa, once Gaza’s biggest hospital, now one of the few even partially functioning in the north.
“We are living through similar dreadful conditions to when Israeli forces first raided Gaza City: sounds of explosions, Israeli bombardment of houses is non-stop,” Amal, 27, living around a kilometre from the hospital, told Reuters via a chat app.
READ: Haniyeh: Israel seeks to sabotage truce talks by targeting Gaza police
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuffed a plea from US President Joe Biden to call off plans for a ground assault of Rafah, the city on the southern edge of Gaza sheltering more than half of the enclave’s 2.3 million people.
Netanyahu told lawmakers in the Knesset that he had made it “supremely clear” to Biden in a phone call “that we are determined to complete the elimination of these battalions in Rafah, and there’s no way to do that except by going in on the ground.”
Israel claims that Rafah is the last major holdout of armed fighters from Hamas. Washington insists that a ground assault there would be a “mistake” and cause too much harm to civilians.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said one of Blinken’s aims was to discuss with Israeli leaders how to defeat Hamas, “Including in Rafah, in a way that protects the civilian population, does not hinder the delivery of humanitarian assistance and advances Israel’s overall security.”
Palestinians ordered into Rafah earlier in the offensive by advancing Israeli forces, have nowhere further to flee. Israel says that it has a plan to evacuate them.
The public tension between the Biden and Netanyahu administrations has little precedent in Israel’s history as a close ally of Washington since its founding in 1948 during the Nakba.
Last week, Chuck Schumer, the leader of Biden’s Democratic Party in the Senate and the highest-ranking Jewish US elected official, called for Israeli voters to replace Netanyahu. Biden called it a “good speech”; Netanyahu called it “inappropriate”.
Netanyahu is increasingly aligning with Biden’s domestic political opponents in a US presidential election year. A source familiar with the plan said that he would address US Republican senators in a video linkup with their weekly policy lunch today.
Long-running Gaza ceasefire talks have resumed this week in Qatar after Israel rejected a counter-proposal from Hamas last week. Both sides have discussed a truce of around six weeks during which Hamas would release around 40 Israeli hostages in return for the freeing of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Despite months of talks mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar, they still differ on what would follow any truce. Hamas says it will release hostages only as part of an agreement that would end the war; Israel says it will discuss only a temporary pause.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told a Beirut news conference that Israel, in its note rejecting the latest Hamas offer, had retracted elements it had previously accepted.
The international hunger monitor relied on by the UN, warned this week of many deaths from famine in Gaza without an immediate ceasefire. Israel says it is letting food in through more routes by land, sea and air, and blames aid agencies for failing to distribute it. The agencies say that Israel must provide better access and security.
