Blinken arrives in Israel on mission to contain war as Gaza deaths and Lebanon attacks continue to rise

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on Monday night with the arduous mission of containing the war in Gaza: both the rising death toll, which now exceeds 23,000 after three months of conflict (1% of the Gazan population), and the hostilities that are spreading throughout the region. Upon landing at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, he was greeted by the news that nearly 250 Palestinians had been killed in attacks in the previous 24 hours, the highest number in a week. There were also news of Israel’s intensified bombardment in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah targets, in which at least eight Shiite militiamen have been killed since Saturday, including Wissam al-Tawil, commander of the elite Radwan Force responsible for launching rockets into northern Israel.

Blinken — who has just toured the main capitals of the Middle East, and will visit the West Bank and Egypt before completing his diplomatic tour — arrives in Israel without having received a clear response from the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington’s demands on the future of the Palestinian enclave after the conflict. Since Friday, Israel has been announcing post-war plans in which the Palestinians would only have limited administration over the coastal enclave, which will remain under Israeli military control.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced that Hamas has been dismantled in the north of the Gaza Strip, which is devastated after weeks of fighting. More than a million civilians, almost all of its inhabitants, were forced to flee. Hours before Blinken’s arrival, IDF chief spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, told The New York Times that the Armed Forces have begun a new phase in the invasion of Gaza, with fewer troops on the ground and fewer airstrikes. Shortly after, the Gaza Ministry of Health reported the death of 247 Palestinians, in the Israeli attacks recorded between noon on Sunday and Monday — the deadliest toll so far this year.

Tens of thousands of Israeli reservists are being demobilized as large-scale military operations in the north come to an end. Last Friday, the Minister of Defense, former general Yoav Gallant, announced the launch of the third and final phase of the war, in which troops will focus on attacking specific objectives in the center and south of the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the conflict live in overcrowded conditions.

Stop “metastasis”

While visiting Jordan on Sunday, Blinken deplored “the unimaginable tragedy” being suffered by Gazan civilians and warned that the conflict “could easily metastasize” in Lebanon, the West Bank and the Red Sea. In Israel, internal divisions in the emergency government overseeing the war appear to have prevented the approval of the defense minister’s so-called “day after” plan. Radical ministers, such as the ultranationalist Itamar Ben-Gvir, have proposed “encouraging” Palestinians in Gaza to leave for other countries and reinstating the Jewish settler settlements that were demolished in 2005. Other centrist ministers, led by former general Benny Gantz, are boycotting Cabinet sessions. Opposition leader, former prime minister Yair Lapid, has invited these ministers to leave the coalition, declaring that “this government is not qualified to lead the war” and “Netanyahu is not qualified to lead the country.”

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, IDF spokesman Hagari said that if a diplomatic solution is not reached with Hezbollah, in which the militants withdraw from the area closest to Lebanon’s border with Israel, Israel can “copy-paste” the strategy it used against Hamas in Gaza to Lebanon. After Hezbollah’s missile attack on Saturday, which involved more than 60 rockets and caused serious damage to the Meron air control base in the border area, Israeli responded with waves of bombings.

On the same northern front, Prime Minister Netanyahu on Monday praised soldiers from the area, who remain at their posts while their relatives have been evacuated out of the range of rockets fired from Lebanon. “Hezbollah made a big mistake with us in 2006 [during the Lebanon war], and it is making one now,” Netanyahu warned.

In the Gaza Strip, nearly 90% of the population has been displaced from their homes, while the last hospitals still working in the center and south of the territory are being evacuated as the fighting nears. The World Health Organization reported that 600 patients in the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, in the central area of Gaza, have been forced to leave. Around 8,000 injured people are in Rafah waiting to be treated in Egypt. More than a million Gazans are also at risk of famine, the Israeli peace NGO B’Tselem warned on Friday.

The Israeli army, meanwhile, claimed that it discovered an underground factory to make medium-range rockets in the Bureij refugee camp, south of Gaza City. Fighting would “continue during the year 2024,″ Hagari said, without clarifying how long the conflict will go on for.

The war seems far from having entered a new phase in Gaza, as the number of causalities continues to rise. Thousands of people are wounded and can no longer receive treatment in hospitals. The offensive now looms over Khan Yunis, the largest urban area in the south, and the border city of Rafah, where displaced Gazans have sought shelter. More than 65,000 homes have been destroyed in the war and another 300,000 have suffered significant damage. Half a million Gazans will have nowhere to return when the fighting ends. The lack of food and water, medicine and warm clothing is a serious threat for the rest of the population.

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