US Secretary of State visits Middle East to seek Arab support

Blinken shakes hands with Qatari PM Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani. Pic/AFP

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stepped up his frantic diplomacy on Saturday, trying to build support for planning a post-conflict future for Gaza as he continued his second urgent mission to the Middle East since the Israel-Hamas conflict began.

A day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointedly snubbed Blinken's blunt warning that Israel risks losing any hope of an eventual peace deal with the Palestinians unless it eases the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, he met in Amman with senior Jordanian and other Arab officials, who remain angry and deeply suspicious of Israel as it intensifies its war against Hamas.

Blinken met first with Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, whose economically and politically ravaged country is home to Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed force hostile to Israel.

Neither Blinken nor Mikati spoke to reporters at the top of their meeting in an Amman hotel. Nor did Blinken speak publicly as he posed for pictures with Qatar's foreign minister, whose country has emerged as the most influential interlocutor with Hamas and has been key to negotiating the limited release of hostages held by the group as well as convincing it to allow foreign citizens to leave Gaza and cross into Egypt.

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Blinken was then to meet with the head of the United Nations agency in charge of assisting Palestinian refugees.

Later, Blinken was to hold group talks with foreign ministers of Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the chair of the PLO executive committee. All parties have denounced Israel's tactics against Hamas, which they say constitutes unlawful collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

Still, the Arab states have thus far resisted American suggestions that they play a larger role in the crisis, expressing outrage at the civilian toll of the Israeli military operations.

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