TEL AVIV: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israel and Palestinians to calm tensions as he visited on Monday during the worst violence in years, reaffirming a long-stalled peace vision as the “only path” forward.
While focusing censure on a Palestinian gun spree outside a synagogue that has put Israel on high alert, Blinken also cautioned against any celebration or avenging of such bloodshed.
Seven people were shot dead in Friday’s attack by an East Jerusalem man who was himself killed by police. Lionized by many fellow Palestinians, he had no known links to militant groups.
A day earlier, Israel carried out an unusually deep raid on Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, killing 10 residents, most of them gunmen. At least 35 Palestinians, including fighters and civilians, have died in violence surging since Jan. 1, medical officials say.
“It is the responsibility of everyone to take steps to calm tensions rather than inflame them,” Blinken told reporters after landing in Tel Aviv.
Friday’s rampage, he said, “was more than attack on individuals. It was also an attack on the universal act of practicing one’s faith. We condemn it in the strongest terms.
“And we condemn all those who celebrate these and any other acts of terrorism that take innocent lives, no matter who the victim is or what they believe. Calls for vengeance against more innocent victims are not the answer.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Blinken will meet later on Monday, has called for more citizens to carry guns as a precaution against such street attacks. But he has also warned Israelis not to resort to vigilante violence.
Blinken is due to see Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday.
Palestinian officials said Israeli settlers had set fire on Monday to two cars near the northern West Bank city of Nablus and thrown stones at a house near Ramallah, following a similar attack on Sunday.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, Palestinian officials said Israeli troops killed a 26-year-old man at a checkpoint. The army said troops opened fire on the man’s car after he rammed into one of them and attempted to flee an inspection.
The last round of US-sponsored talks on founding a Palestinian state alongside Israel stalled in 2014.
Netanyahu’s new hard-line government includes partners who oppose Palestinian statehood, and control over the Palestinian territories is divided between Abbas, who favors diplomacy, and rival Hamas Islamists, who are sworn to Israel’s destruction.
Washington remains “a stalwart believer in the negotiated two-state solution — the only path to a lasting resolution for the conflict,” Blinken said in earlier remarks in Cairo.
Recent data, though, indicates that public support for a two-state solution has reached a historic low. According a survey published last week by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research, just 33 percent of Palestinians and 34 percent of Israeli Jews say they support it, marking a significant drop from data collected in 2020.
Two-thirds of Palestinians and 53 percent of Israeli Jews said they were opposed to the two-state solution.
The US has voiced support for Israel’s security and for Palestinians to enjoy equal measures of dignity.
Blinken reaffirms need for two-state solution on arrival in Israel
https://arab.news/nm5zm
Blinken reaffirms need for two-state solution on arrival in Israel
- Since the start of the year, Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed lives of 35 Palestinian adults, children
- Over the same period six Israeli civilians, including a child, and a Ukrainian civilian have been killed
First responders enter devastated Aleppo neighborhood after days of deadly fighting
- The US-backed SDF, which have played a key role in combating the Daesh group in large swaths of eastern Syria, are the largest force yet to be absorbed into Syria’s national army
ALEPPO, Syria: First responders on Sunday entered a contested neighborhood in Syria’ s northern city of Aleppo after days of deadly clashes between government forces and Kurdish-led forces. Syrian state media said the military was deployed in large numbers.
The clashes broke out Tuesday in the predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud, Achrafieh and Bani Zaid after the government and the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main Kurdish-led force in the country, failed to make progress on how to merge the SDF into the national army. Security forces captured Achrafieh and Bani Zaid.
The fighting between the two sides was the most intense since the fall of then-President Bashar Assad to insurgents in December 2024. At least 23 people were killed in five days of clashes and more than 140,000 were displaced amid shelling and drone strikes.
The US-backed SDF, which have played a key role in combating the Daesh group in large swaths of eastern Syria, are the largest force yet to be absorbed into Syria’s national army. Some of the factions that make up the army, however, were previously Turkish-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.
The Kurdish fighters have now evacuated from the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood to northeastern Syria, which is under the control of the SDF. However, they said in a statement they will continue to fight now that the wounded and civilians have been evacuated, in what they called a “partial ceasefire.”
The neighborhood appeared calm Sunday. The United Nations said it was trying to dispatch more convoys to the neighborhoods with food, fuel, blankets and other urgent supplies.
Government security forces brought journalists to tour the devastated area, showing them the damaged Khalid Al-Fajer Hospital and a military position belonging to the SDF’s security forces that government forces had targeted.
The SDF statement accused the government of targeting the hospital “dozens of times” before patients were evacuated. Damascus accused the Kurdish-led group of using the hospital and other civilian facilities as military positions.
On one street, Syrian Red Crescent first responders spoke to a resident surrounded by charred cars and badly damaged residential buildings.
Some residents told The Associated Press that SDF forces did not allow their cars through checkpoints to leave.
“We lived a night of horror. I still cannot believe that I am right here standing on my own two feet,” said Ahmad Shaikho. “So far the situation has been calm. There hasn’t been any gunfire.”
Syrian Civil Defense first responders have been disarming improvised mines that they say were left by the Kurdish forces as booby traps.
Residents who fled are not being allowed back into the neighborhood until all the mines are cleared. Some were reminded of the displacement during Syria’s long civil war.
“I want to go back to my home, I beg you,” said Hoda Alnasiri.
