The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has arrived in Israel amid renewed efforts by Washington to revive stalled Gaza ceasefire negotiations after Israel’s killing of the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, last week.
Blinken, who has made multiple fruitless trips to the region, arrived with little evidence that either Israel or Hamas were open to movement on their preconditions for a ceasefire in Gaza, where more than a year of an Israeli offensive has claimed more than 42,000 Palestinian lives.
With war raging in Gaza and also with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the prospect of a widening conflict with Iran, international diplomats have struggled not only with the specific issues involved in trying to bring the individual wars to an end but also how to sequence issues related to the connected conflicts.
The state department said before the visit that Blinken would focus on ending the war in Gaza, securing the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and alleviating the suffering of Palestinian civilians.
Blinken is expected to meet the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other top officials. After Israel, he is expected to visit a number of Arab countries, likely to include Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
According to a report on the Axios website, there has been a suggestion from Egypt, a key interlocutor with Hamas, of a much-truncated ceasefire-for-hostages deal under which living Israeli hostages would be released in exchange for a ceasefire lasting a few days, in the hope that it could help break the deadlock.
Israel and Hamas accused each other of making new and unacceptable demands over the summer and negotiations ground to a halt in August.
The conflicts began on 7 October 2023 when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 250 hostage. About 100 of the captives are still held in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Blinken’s arrival follows hard on the heels of that of the US special envoy, Amos Hochstein, in Beirut, seeking to advance discussions on a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
The state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Blinken would underscore the need for a dramatic increase in the amount of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza, something that Blinken and the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, made clear in a letter to Israeli officials last week.
That letter reminded Israel that the Biden administration could be forced by US law to curtail some forms of military aid should the delivery of humanitarian aid continue to be hindered.
Blinken’s previous trips yielded little in the way of ending hostilities but he has managed to increase aid deliveries to Gaza in the past.
The US, Egypt and Qatar have brokered months of talks between Israel and Hamas, trying to strike a deal in which the militants would release dozens of hostages in return for an end to the war, a lasting ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
On top of the concerns over the continued Israeli offensives in Gaza and Lebanon is the expectation that Israel will soon launch its retaliation for last month’s substantial Iranian ballistic missile strike, which targeted a number of Israeli military sites in retaliation for Israel’s killing of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Iran’s Abbas Araghchi (left) and the Kuwaiti crown prince Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Sabah in Kuwait City on Tuesday. Photograph: Iranian foreign ministry/EPA
With leaked US intelligence suggesting that a response might be imminent, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has been crisscrossing the region in recent days to try to build support. Speaking in Kuwait on Tuesday, he said Gulf Arab countries had assured him they would not allow their territory – including airspace – to be used for any Israeli attack.
“All the neighbours assured us that they will not allow their lands and air to be used against Iran,” Araghchi said, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
Gulf Arab nations such as the UAE and Qatar host major military installations, and there are concerns that an all-out regional war could draw them in. Iran has repeatedly vowed to respond to any Israeli strike.
Adding impetus to the calls for progress on a ceasefire on Tuesday was the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, which called for a temporary truce to allow people to leave areas of northern Gaza, as health officials said they were running out of supplies to treat patients hurt in a renewed three-week-old Israeli offensive in the north of the coastal strip.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of Unrwa, said the humanitarian situation had reached a dire point, with bodies abandoned by roadsides or buried under rubble.
“In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die. They feel deserted, hopeless and alone,” he said in a statement on X. “I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area & reach safer places.”