By Humeyra Pamuk, Maayan Lubell and Nidal al-Mughrabi
TEL AVIV/JERUSALEM/CAIRO (Reuters) -Secretary of State Antony Blinken was meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday in the first big U.S. push for a Middle East ceasefire since Israel killed the leader of Hamas last week – and the last attempt before a presidential election that could upend U.S. policy.
Diplomatic efforts have so far failed to bring an end to both the year-long war in the Palestinian territory Gaza and to its spillover conflict between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
Blinken faces a daunting mission. Hezbollah said on Tuesday there would be no negotiations while fighting continues and it claimed responsibility for a drone attack on Netanyahu’s holiday home on Saturday.
Washington hopes the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar – Israel’s most wanted man, blamed for triggering the year of warfare by planning the deadly attacks on Oct. 7 last year on Israeli territory – will provide a new opportunity for peace.
But Israel has so far shown no sign of relenting in its military campaigns even after assassinating several leaders of Iran’s allies Hamas and Hezbollah, which lost its powerful secretary-general Sayed Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike.
In Gaza on Tuesday, the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA called for a temporary truce to allow civilians to leave areas in the north of the enclave where Israeli forces were hunting down Hamas militants.
Gaza health officials said more than 20 people had been killed by Israeli forces. Dozens of corpses lay on roadsides and under rubble, they said.
“Hospitals ran out of coffins to prepare the dead,” said Munir Al-Bursh, director of the Gaza health ministry.
SIRENS IN TEL AVIV
Blinken was meeting Netanyahu and other officials at the start of a week-long trip that will also take him to Jordan and Qatar. U.S. officials say he is focusing on plans for rebuilding and governing Gaza after the war, necessary for reaching a ceasefire.
Hours before Blinken landed, air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and other parts of central Israel after Hezbollah fired missiles at what it said were Israeli military targets near Haifa and Tel Aviv. The missiles were an apparent demonstration that Hezbollah’s capabilities have survived Israel’s biggest onslaught in decades of hostilities.
The conflict has spread to Lebanon over the past month, with Israel launching a ground campaign and intensified air assaults against Hezbollah, which had been firing across the frontier in solidarity with the Palestinians.
During a night of heavy strikes on Lebanon’s south and the suburbs of Beirut, Israel struck the area near Beirut’s Rafik Hariri hospital, Lebanon’s main state medical facility. Lebanese authorities said 13 people were killed.
The Israeli military said the hospital itself had not been targeted and was not affected. Director Jihad Saadeh said the hospital was damaged because of an Israeli attack near it.
Blinken has been a regular visitor to the Middle East throughout the conflict – this trip is his 11th since start of the Gaza war – but all previous attempts to reach a ceasefire have failed.
Hamas, which is still holding scores of hostages in Gaza seized in its raid on Israel, refuses to release them without an Israeli pledge to end the war.
Israel says it will not halt fighting until the Islamist militant group is completely destroyed in the enclave, which has been largely reduced to ruins by Israel’s bombardments.
The past month has seen a major escalation in Lebanon with Israel’s ground assault and a massive air campaign, which has driven 1.2 million Lebanese from their homes.
Washington and other allies hope Israel’s killing of Sinwar in a firefight last week could provide a breakthrough by making it easier for Netanyahu’s far-right government to assert that its objectives have been achieved in Gaza.
But diplomats and other sources say Israel is pressing to lock in a strong position before a new U.S. administration takes over following the Nov. 5 election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
ISRAELI RETALIATION AGAINST IRAN
State Department officials said Blinken intends to raise the issue of what happens in Gaza when the war ends, including security, governance and reconstruction. Washington has long said it ideally wants Gaza reunited with the West Bank under a government run by the Palestinian Authority, which now exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli occupied West Bank.
Blinken will also discuss Israel’s anticipated retaliation for a ballistic missile attack launched by Iran on Oct. 1, a senior State Department official said.
Allies are worried that Israel’s response could disrupt oil markets and risks igniting a full-blown war between the arch-enemies.
The Gaza war began after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israeli communities on Oct. 7 last year, killing around 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza has killed 42,718 Palestinians, Gaza health authorities say.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UNRWA relief agency, said on Tuesday the humanitarian situation in northern Gaza was dire.
“People are just waiting to die,” he said 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.”
Health officials said they were running out of supplies to treat patients hurt in a three-week-old Israeli offensive.
Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, said there were few staff and not enough space for all the casualties.
“Therefore, we had to implement the difficult triage system for cases – we had to leave some to die and some to live.”
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Laila Bassam, Maya Gebeily and Amina Ismail in Beirut, Clauda Tanios and Nayera Abdullah in Dubai, Maayan Lubell and Jonathan Saul in Jerusalem; Humeyra Pamuk, Simon Lewis in Washington and Thomas Escritt in Berlin; Writing by Michael Perry and Michael Georgy; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Angus MacSwan, Peter Graff)
