The head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, arrived in Egypt on Sunday to begin a brief tour of the Middle East, amid escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
Blinken will meet with the Egyptian president and foreign minister, and then travel to Jerusalem and Ramallah on Monday and Tuesday.
The escalation of violence is likely to dominate discussions in the Egyptian capital, as Cairo is a historic mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This long-planned tour comes at a time when tensions in the conflict have escalated in just a few days.
On Friday, a 21-year-old Palestinian killed seven people outside an East Jerusalem synagogue, and another attack on Saturday left two injured.
The two attacks took place after an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp, in the occupied West Bank, in which nine Palestinians were killed.
In response, there was rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory.
Immediately afterwards, the Israeli army proceeded to bombard the Palestinian enclave.
On Sunday, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported that Israeli security guards killed a Palestinian near a settlement in the occupied West Bank. According to the Israeli army, the man was armed.
“No change”
Blinken will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and will call “in general terms for steps to be taken to de-escalate tensions,” according to the State Department.
But the room for maneuver of the North American Secretary of State seems limited, taking into account that the ways to resolve the conflict are stagnant.
According to experts contacted by AFP, there will be few diplomatic advances. Washington will probably limit itself to reiterating its support for the two-state solution.
“I think the best they can do is for things to stabilize, to avoid a repeat (of what happened) in May 2021,” the latest escalation of violence between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, says Aaron David Miller, Former US adviser and expert at the Carnegie Foundation of Washington.
Ghaith Al Omari, an analyst at the Washington Institute, estimates for his part that “this visit does not indicate any change in the US position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” but, he foresees, that “the conversation (with Mahmud Abas) will not be pleasant”.
avalanche of visits
Blinken’s trip to Israel reflects Washington’s desire to quickly strengthen its relationship with Netanyahu, who heads the most right-wing government in the country’s history and whose relations with the Democratic administration of Joe Biden have been strained lately.
This visit follows that of White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
“I’ve never seen so many visits at such a high level under any other administration,” says Aaron David Miller.
“It’s unprecedented,” he adds, mentioning the possibility of Netanyahu traveling to Washington in February.
“It’s a bit like the area is flooded,” agrees another expert, David Makovsky of the Washington Institute.
CIA Director William Burns was also in the region recently.
On his trip, Blinken will insist on “the importance of maintaining the historical status quo” in the Esplanade of the Mosques in East Jerusalem, the third holy place in Islam and the holiest in Judaism (which is called the Temple Mount), located on the Palestinian part of the city, occupied and annexed by Israel.
The Abraham Accords, a process of normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab countries, will also appear among the topics addressed.
On Sunday, at a meeting with young people from the American University in Cairo, Blinken did not comment on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying only that he would go to Israel and the West Bank.