Israel-Gaza war: Blinken visits West Bank amid overwhelming calls for ceasefire
Ramallah - Top US diplomat Antony Blinken made a surprise visit to the occupied West Bank on Sunday, meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas as Israel continues its bombing campaign in Gaza.
"I have no words to describe the genocide and destruction suffered by our Palestinian people in Gaza at the hands of Israel's war machine, with no regard for the principles of international law," Abbas told Blinken in remarks carried by official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Blinken arrived in Ramallah under tight security one day after meeting in Jordan with Arab foreign ministers angered by mounting civilian deaths in Gaza, where the health ministry said dozens were killed in a strike on a refugee camp.
Washington has rebuffed calls for a ceasefire, instead backing Israel's stated goal of crushing Hamas militants who staged the deadliest attack in the country's history on October 7, killing more than 1,400 people and taking 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
Israel has relentlessly bombarded the besieged Gaza Strip in response, leveling entire city blocks and killing more than 9,770 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Blinken last week told a Senate hearing the Palestinian Authority should retake control of Gaza, even though it currently exercises only limited autonomy in parts of the West Bank and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long sought to sideline it.
The extreme violence in Gaza has exacerbated tensions in the West Bank, where more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces and in settler attacks, including three young men killed by Israeli forces on Sunday, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Blinken told Abbas that Palestinians in Gaza "must not be forcibly displaced" while also discussing "the need to stop extremist violence against Palestinians" in the West Bank, a State Department spokesperson said.
Israel attacks refugee camp in Gaza amid growing calls for ceasefire
Ground battles raged on Sunday in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops tightening their encirclement of Gaza City – still home to hundreds of thousands of civilians – were seen engaged in house-to-house battles as tanks and armored bulldozers churned through the sand in footage released by the army.
In a video taken from Israel's Sderot along the border with the Gaza Strip, an Israeli flag was seen raised on top of a destroyed building.
Since Israel sent ground forces into the north of the narrow Palestinian territory late last month, "over 2,500 terror targets have been struck" by "ground, air and naval forces," the army said on Sunday.
Leaflets dropped by the army again urged Gaza City residents to evacuate south between 10 AM and 2 PM, a day after a US official said at least 350,000 civilians remained in and around the city that is now an urban war zone.
In the latest strikes in Gaza, Israeli bombing of Al-Maghazi refugee camp late Saturday killed 45 people, with an eyewitness reporting children dead and homes smashed, the local health ministry said.
"An Israeli air strike targeted my neighbors' house in Al-Maghazi camp, my house next door partially collapsed," said Mohammed Alaloul (37), a journalist working for the Turkish Anadolu Agency.
Alaloul told AFP his 13-year-old son, Ahmed, and his four-year-old son, Qais, were killed in the bombing, along with his brother. His wife, mother, and two other children were injured.
More than 240 Israeli and foreign hostages were abducted by Hamas, officials say, and Netanyahu has rebuffed proposals of a truce until the group releases them all. Israel, meanwhile, is said to hold as many as 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners in detention.
Blinken faced a rising tide of anger in meetings with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan on Saturday, where he reaffirmed US support for "humanitarian pauses" to ensure desperate civilians get help, a day after Netanyahu gave the idea short shrift.
Blinken was later headed to Turkey whose President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has held Netanyahu personally responsible for the growing civilian death toll in Gaza. Turkey on Saturday said it was recalling its ambassador to Israel and breaking off contacts with Netanyahu. Erdogan said he will be traveling within Turkey and will not meet personally with Blinken.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, whose country has been acting as the sole conduit for foreigners to escape the Gaza Strip and for aid to get in, called for an "immediate and comprehensive ceasefire."
Netanyahu under pressure as Israeli official makes nuclear threat
The call was echoed by tens of thousands of protesters in Washington in solidarity with Palestinians, one of multiple rallies held from Indonesia to Iran as well as in European cities.
Thousands also demonstrated in Israel on Saturday as pressure mounts on Netanyahu over his government's lack of preparedness for the October 7 attacks and its handling of the hostage crisis.
In Tel Aviv, several thousand took to the streets, including relatives and friends of some of the hostages, chanting "bring them home now," while others came out in support of a ceasefire.
In Jerusalem, hundreds came together outside Netanyahu's residence with more explicit calls for his resignation.
Meanwhile, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu has been suspended from government meetings "until further notice" Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said, after suggesting in an interview that Israel could drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza.
Eliyahu, an ultranationalist politician part of Netnayahu's ruling coalition, told Israel's Kol Barama radio he was not entirely satisfied with the scale of Israel's retaliation in the Palestinian territory.
When the interviewer asked whether the Israeli minister advocated dropping "some kind of atomic bomb" on the Gaza Strip "to kill everyone," Eliyahu replied: "That's one option."
In a follow-up question about the estimated 240 hostages held in Gaza, Eliyahu said that "in war we pay a price."
"Why are the lives of the hostages... more important than the lives of the soldiers?" he said.
Following the outcry over his remarks, Eliyahu claimed in a post on X that his statement about the atomic bomb was "metaphorical."
Israel has never admitted to having a nuclear bomb, though it is widely believed to do so.
Cover photo: REUTERS