Blinken’s diplomatic gamble in MidEast: Critics question ‘face-saving’ trip amidst Gaza war criticism

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken | Credits: Getty Images
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken | Credits: Getty Images

United States: On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo, capping a period of frenzied diplomacy between Israel and its neighbors over the Gaza war.

The visit comes a day after Sisi met with Jordan’s King Abdullah and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Red Sea port of Aqaba, as Washington seeks a resolution to the killing in Gaza, even as the violence threatens to expand to Lebanon, Iraq, and Red Sea commerce lanes.

Human Casualties

According to Gaza’s health ministry, Egypt and Jordan warned that Israel’s crackdown, which killed over 23,000 Palestinians, must not displace the strip’s 2.3 million residents or result in Israeli occupation. 

Destroyed Gaza because of ongoing war | Credits: AP Photo

Israel and its US backers have emphasized that this is not their plan. The war began with an Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian Hamas militants who killed 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostages.

Blinken’s Proposals and Regional Responses

Blinken, who visited nine countries and the occupied West Bank in a week, brought Israel a rough agreement in which its Muslim-majority neighbors would help rehabilitate Gaza after the war and continue economic integration with Israel, but only if Israel agreed to eventually allow the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

That state would include Gaza and the West Bank, and Blinken met Abbas in Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital, on Wednesday. Washington wants the unpopular Palestinian Authority to restructure and regain credibility before taking control of Gaza if Israel succeeds in ousting Hamas, which has ruled the strip since 2007.

In Egypt, Blinken was expected to address ongoing talks with Hamas, which were mediated by Egypt and Qatar.

He told NBC in an interview on Tuesday that he hoped Hamas would engage in talks to release more captives after an earlier agreement that saw violence halted and more than 100 hostages released fell through.

What are Israel and Palestine? Why are they fighting?

The main reason behind this war was the land; both countries wanted the same land. This all started when Israel declared war on the Gaza Strip after an unprecedented attack by the armed Palestinian group Hamas on Saturday; the world’s eyes are again sharply focused on what might come next.

Flags of Israel and Palestinian | Credits: ShutterStock

Jews fleeing persecution in Europe wanted to establish a national homeland in what was then an Arab- and Muslim-majority territory in the Ottoman and later British Empire. 

The Arabs resisted, seeing the land as rightfully theirs. An early United Nations plan to give each group part of the land failed, and Israel and the surrounding Arab nations fought several wars over the territory. Today’s lines largely reflect the outcomes of two of these wars, one waged in 1948 and another in 1967.