The White House announces President Joe Biden showed “support” for a cease-fire in a request to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, the eighth day of Israeli-Palestinian strife. Biden’s movement indicates US anxiety for a conclusion to Israel”s role of resentments with Hamas, although it comes short of joining increasing Democratic requests for an urgent cease-fire.
The Biden administration distanced itself Monday from increasing proposals by Democrats and others for an urgent cease-fire between Israel and Gaza”s Hamas leaders as combat entered a second week, with more than 200 people dead, most of them Palestinians in Gaza. The United States, Israel”s top associate, also barred for the third time what would have been a collective report by the 15-nation UN Security Council showing “grave concern” over the intensifying Israeli-Palestinian dispute and the death of civilian lives. The last US denial Monday killed the Security Council statement, at least for momentarily. White House press secretary Jen Psaki and national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States rather was concentrating on “quiet, intensive diplomacy.”
As missile and rocket transfers between Israel and Hamas arose to their most dangerous levels since 2014 and the international clamor spread, the Biden administration decided to distort US foreign policy locus away from the Middle East and Afghanistan has failed so far to scrutinize Israel’s role in the combat, send a top-level representative to the region or press Israel publicly to turn down its latest military operation in the thickly populated Gaza Strip, as some past US officials have done. Requests by other nations so far show no indication of advancement. The US administration’s openly strengthened reply appears despite calls from Security Council partners, some Democrats and others for President Joe Biden” and other international leaders to paddle more deeply into diplomacy to conclude the worst Israel-Palestinian violence in years and revive long-collapsed negotiation for real peace.
Speaking in Copenhagen, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ticked off other, more subdued US outreach so far to attempt to de-escalate resentments in the Gaza Strip and Israel, and said he would be executing more calls Monday.”In all of these engagements we have made clear that we are prepared to lend our support and good offices to the parties should they seek a cease-fire,” Blinken said. He said he embraced attempts by the UN, Egypt, and other countries working for a cease-fire.
“Any diplomatic initiative that advances that prospect is something that we’ll support,” he said. “And we are again willing and ready to do that. But ultimately it is up to the parties to make clear that they want to pursue a cease-fire.”Pulling back from Middle East diplomacy to concentrate on other policy priorities such as Biden’s stress on administering with the growth of China holds political peril for the government. That involves exposing any criticism when violence beacons as the US move back from battle zones in the Middle East, and Afghanistan. But a comparatively hands-off strategy in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian battle also could save the US years of shuttle diplomacy in aid of a peaceful manner that neither side actively encourages.
Approximately 200 Palestinians had been killed in the strikes as of Monday, including 59 children and 35 women, with 1,300 people injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Eight people in Israel have been killed in rocket strikes begun from Gaza, including a 5-year-old boy and a soldier. Blinken also said he had urged Israel for any proof for its assertion that Hamas was working in a Gaza office building housing The Associated Press and Al Jazeera news bureaus that were damaged in an Israeli airstrike over the weekend. But he said that he had “not seen any information provided.”
Blinken’s remarks came after UN Security Council diplomats and Muslim foreign ministers assembled emergency weekend conferences to necessitate a halt to civilian bloodshed, as Israeli warplanes took out the deadliest single attacks Sunday in the week of combat. Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told an emergency high-level conference of the Security Council on Sunday that the United States was “working tirelessly through diplomatic channels” to stop the fighting. She informed that the restoration to equipped battle would only put a mediated two-state explication to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian dispute even more out of range.
Nevertheless, the United States obstructed moves by China, Norway, and Tunisia in the Security Council for the statement by the UN’s most powerful organization, including a request for the end of hostilities. The submitted statement asked for an end to “the crisis related to Gaza” and the security of civilians, particularly children. In Israel, Hady Amr, a deputy assistant sent by Blinken to attempt to de-escalate the crisis, met with administrators. Blinken has no announced plans to hold in the Middle East on his current trip.
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