by Antony J. Blinken, US Secretary of State, and Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top diplomat, are separately visiting the Middle East in an effort to reduce the risk of war spreading further in the region.
Blinken is in Amman, Jordan, for meetings on Sunday as part of a one-day tour of the Middle East. He was in Turkey on Saturday, meeting with his Turkish counterpart and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with whom he discussed the need to prevent the Gaza conflict from spreading, among other issues, according to a State Department statement. He later met with the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, on the island of Crete.
Speaking to reporters, Blinken said “we want to do everything we can to make sure we don’t see an escalation” in violence between Israel and Hezbollah. He also noted that Turkey could play a role in a plan for post-war Gaza.
“I think it is clear from our conversations today that Turkey is prepared to play a positive and productive role in the work that must be done the day after the conflict ends,” he said, adding that Turkey could also take advantage of its ties with countries in the region to “do everything possible to de-escalate and prevent the conflict from spreading.”
Borrell, the European Union diplomat, was visiting Lebanon on Saturday, where he said his priority was to “avoid regional escalation and advance diplomatic efforts” for peace in the region.
Borrell has been at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to ensure that the war in Gaza ends with an attempt to create a Palestinian state in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. For now, however, that seems a distant prospect, as Israeli strikes and ground operations continued inside Gaza on Saturday, resulting in the deaths of several people, according to Wafa, a news agency run by the Palestine Liberation Organization. .
Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza on October 7, prompting Israel to respond in Gaza with one of the deadliest military campaigns of this century. At the same time, Israel had been involved in a second low-level conflict with Hezbollah, a Hamas ally and Iran’s proxy.
That second front has been largely contained within the border areas of northern Israel and southern Lebanon, and both sides have generally limited their attacks to a few kilometers from the border, far from major cities like Tel Aviv or Beirut.
But the killing of a top Hamas commander, Saleh al-Arouri, on Tuesday in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, in a building deep in a Hezbollah stronghold, raised fears that Hezbollah could respond with a more forceful attack of its own. against the main central cities. Israel. The attack was attributed by Hamas and Hezbollah to Israel. Lebanese and American officials also attributed the attack to Israel, although Israel has not confirmed its role.
Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, has given two speeches since the assassination, most recently on Friday, in which he promised that the assassination would not go “unpunished.”
For now, the United States is engaged in diplomatic efforts to reduce tensions, but if that fails, Israel’s government has hinted that it could resort to a more aggressive military operation and possibly even an invasion of Lebanon.
