Blinken pushes for more aid for Gaza in talks with Israel’s Netanyahu

TEL AVIV: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday for talks aimed at ensuring more aid flows into Gaza, amid increasingly tense relations between the two allies over the sixmonth-old war.

In Gaza, Israel claimed to have killed or captured hundreds of Hamas fighters in a five-day operation at the Al-Shifa hospital complex, one of the only medical facilities even partially functioning in the north. Hamas and medical staff deny fighters were present there.

Blinken, on his sixth trip to the Middle East since the war broke out on Oct. 7, has been engaged in an intense round of diplomacy since arriving in the region on Wednesday, meeting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia and foreign ministers and officials from Arab nations in Cairo on Thursday.

Parallel meetings are also taking place in Doha on Friday aimed at securing a ceasefire in the conflict.

The top US diplomat’s latest visit to Israel comes at a time of strained ties between the two countries, with US President Joe Biden calling Israel’s campaign in Gaza “over the top” and saying it has had too great a toll on civilian lives.

Prior to the meeting with Netanyahu, which lasted about 40 minutes, Blinken said he would address the growing gap between the two countries in his one-onone conversation. He also met with the Israeli war cabinet.

Blinken said he would push Netanyahu to take urgent steps to allow more aid into the densely-populated enclave, where mass death from famine is imminent, according to the United Nations.

The war was triggered by a raid into southern Israel by Hamas fighters who killed 1,200 and took 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies. More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent Israeli bombardments, with many more feared dead under the rubble, Gaza health authorities say.