The head of American diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, is expected to meet today with the political leadership of Israel and exercise pressure to de-escalate the war in the Gaza Stripthe day after Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon which they killed two important officials respectively of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The US Secretary of State landed in Tel Aviv last night after several other stations in the areawhile the Israeli army, whose action against Hamas is now in its fourth month, announced that more targeted operations will soon be conducted in the central and southern part of the Gaza Strip.

Sirens sounded yesterday in the central and southern part of Israel, as well as in the north, on the border with Lebanon, where exchanges of fire with fighters of Hezbollah, a faction close to Iran, allied to Hamas, continue to raise concerns about the spread of the conflict.

Hezbollah announced yesterday Monday the death of one of the commanders of its military arm, Wissam Hassan Tawil, in an Israeli strike. This was the first time a senior member of the organization had been targeted since October.

An official in Lebanon, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Tawil “played a key role” in Hezbollah’s operations in the south. The Israeli military said Hezbollah “military installations” in Lebanese territory were hit, without commenting at this stage on the death of the official of the Shiite armed movement.

The raid follows the death of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in a raid in Beirut earlier this month.

Yesterday, Monday, the Israeli army also announced that the “central figure” of Hamas in Syria, Hassan Akasha, had been killed. According to Chahal, it was “a central figure responsible for the rockets fired by Hamas from Syrian territory against Israel in recent weeks.”

Repeated Israeli strikes in Lebanon and Syria, as well as increasing attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria and a campaign by Yemen’s Houthi rebels against merchant ships in the Red Sea they say are linked to Israel, continue to raise concerns that the rest of the Middle East will be dragged into this conflict.

In an effort to prevent further escalation of violence, Anthony Blinken began a new tour of the region, his fourth in a row since the outbreak of war, visiting notably Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Direction

In Israel today, the US Secretary of State is expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, as well as members of the wartime government, including the defense and foreign ministers. He is expected to hold separate talks with Benny Gantz, who despite being part of the opposition is part of the wartime government.

In Saudi Arabia, Mr Blinken said he discussed normalizing relations between the kingdom and Israel, negotiations on which were suspended by Riyadh’s decision a week after the outbreak of war on October 7.

He also assured that Washington will cooperate with countries in the region by taking the initiative for reconstruction and stabilization in the Palestinian enclave.

Faced with a death toll that now exceeds 23,000 dead in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas Health Ministry, the US Secretary of State said he wanted to discuss “the direction military operations will take” in the Palestinian enclave and that he would ” insisted on the absolute imperative” that Israel “do more to protect civilians.”

Israel’s civil-military leadership has vowed to “eliminate” Hamas — designated a “terrorist organization” by Israel, the EU and the US — after its unprecedented attack on southern sectors of Israeli territory on October 7, in which some 1,140 people were killed , mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official statements from the authorities. It was the deadliest attack by the Jewish state in 1948.

Israeli retaliatory shelling leveled entire neighborhoods, displaced 85% of the population and caused a massive humanitarian crisis, according to the UN.

“Declared policy” of famine

International organizations do not stop sounding the alarm about the ongoing humanitarian disaster and the fact that aid is still trickling into Gazans despite the recent UN Security Council decision.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights group in the US, along with the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, yesterday denounced the Israeli government’s “declared policy” of starvation in the Gaza Strip. government.

Anthony Blinken is expected to press Israel to abide by international humanitarian law and call for “immediate action” to increase humanitarian aid reaching the Gaza Strip.

As Israel’s main ally and arms supplier, the US is increasingly concerned about the huge number of civilian casualties in the war. US President Joe Biden said yesterday that he is talking “discreetly” with the Israeli government to convince it to “reduce” the presence of its troops in the Palestinian enclave.

At the same time, the Israeli army announced that it will enter a new “phase” of the war in Gaza. His spokesman, Daniel Hagari, told the New York Times that fewer troops would be deployed in this “phase”. He clarified that their number will decrease in January.

“Although there are still terrorists and weapons in the north, it is no longer an organized military context,” he insisted during a press conference, adding that Chahal’s forces “are now operating in a different way in this region.”

“These are always complex operations, with fierce battles taking place in the central and southern sectors. The fighting will continue throughout 2024,” he added.

The staff announced today that four more soldiers were killed during the ground operations. According to official data, the casualties in the operations against Hamas in the ranks of the Israeli army are tolerated at 182. However, this number is considered underestimated by a portion of the Israeli press.

In the Gaza Strip the day before Sunday, two journalists working for Al Jazeera were killed in a targeted Israeli strike against their car, according to the Qatar TV network. One of the two, cameraman Mustafa Thuraya, also worked frequently with AFP.

The Israeli military claimed responsibility for the strike, telling AFP that it had targeted “a terrorist operating a flying object who posed a threat to its soldiers” and adding that it was “aware of information that (…) two other suspects who were riding in the same vehicle” were killed.

The war also escalated violence, to the worst level in almost twenty years, in the West Bank, an area under Israeli occupation since 1967.

The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health announced yesterday that three young men, aged 22, 23 and 24, were killed by Israeli fire in Tulkarem. For its part, Israeli police announced that three men were killed and two others were wounded during an operation to arrest a “wanted terrorist” in this occupied West Bank city.

Since the war broke out, hostilities on the border have killed more than 180 people on the Lebanese side, including more than 135 Hezbollah fighters, as well as civilians and journalists, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, nine soldiers and five civilians have been killed, according to authorities.