On Foreign News
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken today, called on Israel to help rather than hinder the Palestinian Authority, saying that Israel’s long-term security was at stake.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Blinken renewed his call for a “pathway to a Palestinian state” even as Washington backs Israel’s Gaza campaign launched in response to the October 7 Hamas attack.
The United States has backed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call to eradicate Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, but has called for the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank, gradually to take over control in the Gaza Strip.
Blinken said that the Palestinian Authority was working to address fundamental issues including eliminating corruption and improving transparency, which “they can’t on their own deliver without partnership with Israel”.
While not directly answering a question about Netanyahu’s hard-right government, Blinken noted that critics in the past have accused the Palestinians of not being ready to accept a two-state solution.
Fighting has ravaged Gaza since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attacks on Israel that resulted in the death of about 1,140 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
At least 24,448 Palestinians, about 70 percent of them women, young children and adolescents, have been killed in Israeli bombardments and ground assaults, according to the Gaza health ministry’s latest figures.
