The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, arrived in Tel Aviv this Friday for a brief official visit, the third to Israel since the war with the Islamist group Hamas broke out on October 7. Blinken seeks to get Israel to accept humanitarian “pauses” in Gaza that would allow aid to enter the Palestinian enclave. The White House has maintained that the pauses in fighting should be temporary and localizedand has insisted on that would not prevent Israel from defending itself.

Blinken plans to meet with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as with President Isaac Herzog and members of the Israeli War Cabinet. Before starting his trip, Blinken has written on social network X that he will work “with regional leaders to protect civilians and prevent the spread of the conflict” and advocated for “broader peace and security in the region.”

“We are determined to avoid escalation on any of these fronts, whether in southern Lebanon, the West Bank or anywhere else in the region,” he stated before addressing the press on a trip that will also take him to Jordan and Turkey. “We are making sure May this message arrive. “No one is interested in this escalating and some of the other parties involved recognized it, but we are going to work on it every day,” he indicated.

His third visit to Israel, but does not ask for a ceasefire

The US Secretary of State traveled to Israel for the last time last October 16after an intense tour of the Middle East that took him to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan, in which he tried to mediate to achieve a temporary ceasefire that would allow the entry of humanitarian aid, something that materialized within days. after.

Blinken made another quick visit to Israel October 8the day after the war broke out with the Islamist militias in Gaza, which later took him to other countries in the region to try to stop this new war, which has already lasted for 28 days.

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, who also visited Israel on October 18, defended this Wednesday the need to a “pause” of Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip to remove Hamas hostages from the territoryand reiterated his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Washington called for the first time on October 24 for “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to be able to bring aid to the civilian population in the Strip during a speech by Blinken before the UN Security Council, although he did not join the ceasefire request which the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, had done shortly before.