The United States is concerned by the security tensions in the occupied West Bank, an official said on Thursday, after one of the deadliest raids by Israeli forces against Palestinians in years, which comes ahead of a visit to the Middle East by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
Starting on Sunday, the top U.S. diplomat will travel to Egypt, Israel, and the West Bank amid tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.
The visit was announced hours after Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians, including a 60-year-old woman, during a raid in the crowded Jenin Refugee Camp; according to officials, the enormous single death toll in years of fighting.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least 20 people were wounded before the Israeli forces withdrew mid-morning.
Israeli forces subsequently shot a tenth Palestinian dead in Al-Ram, near Ramallah, it said. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said he was shot in clashes that erupted during a protest against the killings in Jenin.
Since its records began in 2005, the United Nations has never recorded such a high death toll in a single operation in the West Bank.
Türkiye, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia strongly condemned the deadly Israeli incursion.
The top U.S. State Department official on the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, said the reported civilian deaths were “quite regrettable.”
“And then obviously there is the potential for things to worsen in security terms,” Leaf told reporters on a telephone briefing, adding she had spoken several times to U.S. ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides, as well as to Israeli and Palestinian officials, on Thursday morning.
The U.S. was urging de-escalation and coordination between Israeli and Palestinian security forces, Leaf said, even as the Palestinian Authority said it was ending cooperation with Israel in the wake of the raid.
Blinken’s visit is his first since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new right-wing government came to power after elections in November, stirring concern at home and abroad given some coalition members’ opposition to Palestinian statehood and other hard-line views.
Announcing Blinken’s visit, the State Department said that in meetings with Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Blinken would discuss the importance of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, among other issues.
Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement that Blinken would also discuss the importance of upholding the status quo around the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, where a visit by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the new far-right security minister, recently stirred outrage among Palestinians.
For Muslims, Al-Aqsa represents the world’s third-holiest site. Jews, for their part, call the area the Temple Mount, saying it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem, where Al-Aqsa is located, during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It annexed the entire city in 1980, which was never recognized by the international community.
Blinken’s trip comes on the heels of a visit by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan to Israel last week, where he discussed the war in Ukraine and concerns over U.S. regional adversary Iran’s support for Russia’s invasion through the provision of drones.
While Israel has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it has limited its assistance to Kyiv to humanitarian aid and protective gear.
In Cairo, Blinken will meet with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and other Egyptian officials to strengthen the two countries' strategic partnership and bolster their shared support for elections in Libya and talks to form a civilian government in Sudan after a 2021 military coup, Price said.
