AFP :
ccUS Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads back to the Middle East Monday on a new push for an elusive Gaza ceasefire two weeks before US elections, seeing a new opportunity from Israel’s killing of Hamas’s leader.
It will be the 11th trip to the Middle East by the top US diplomat since war broke out a year ago, with Blinken on his last visit to Israel in August warning it may have been the “last chance” for a US-led ceasefire plan.
That push did not succeed, and the conflict has escalated and expanded since then, with Israel pounding Hezbollah targets in Lebanon and warning of a new strike directly on Iran, whose clerical leaders back both Hamas and Hezbollah.
US President Joe Biden, who personally laid out the ceasefire plan on May 31 that would also free hostages from Gaza, has seen new hope since Israel last week killed Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar.
Biden, speaking to reporters on a visit to Germany, said he called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to congratulate him and tell him that Blinken would head to the region.
“I told him that we were really pleased with his actins and, further, that now is the time to move on — move on, move towards a ceasefire,” Biden said on Thursday.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed 42,603 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the UN considers reliable.
Last month, Israel expanded its military operations to Lebanon, where at least 1,470 people have been killed since then, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.
Blinken’s trip comes days after he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Israel that the United States could withhold some of its billions of dollars in military aid unless more humanitarian assistance is allowed into Gaza, where the UN warns more than 1.8 million people are facing “extreme hunger.”