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ANKARA, Turkey, 6 Nov (AP) \u2014 U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up a grueling Middle East diplomatic tour on Monday in Turkey after only limited success in efforts to forge a regional consensus on how best to ease civilian suffering in Gaza as Israel intensifies its war against Hamas.<\/p>\n
In the Turkish capital, Ankara, Blinken met with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan following a frantic weekend of travel that took him from Israel to Jordan, the occupied West Bank, Cyprus and Iraq, to build support for the Biden administration\u2019s proposal for \u201chumanitarian pauses\u201d to Israel\u2019s relentless military campaign in Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of this is a work in progress,\u201d Blinken said before leaving Turkey. \u201cWe don\u2019t obviously agree on everything, but there are common views on some of the imperatives of the moment that we\u2019re working on together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blinken\u2019s shuttle diplomacy came as Israeli troops surrounded Gaza City and cut off the northern part of the besieged Hamas-ruled territory. Troops are expected to enter the city Monday or Tuesday and are likely to face militants fighting street by street using a vast network of tunnels. Casualties will likely rise on both sides in the month-old war, which has already killed more than 10,000 Palestinians according to the Hamas-run health ministry.<\/p>\n
The top U.S. diplomat hopes that pauses in the war would allow for a surge of humanitarian aid to Gaza and the release of hostages captured by Hamas during the militants\u2019 deadly Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel that killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians \u2014 while also preventing the conflict from spreading regionally.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve engaged the Israelis on steps that they can take to minimize civilian casualties,\u201d Blinken said before leaving Ankara. \u201cWe\u2019re working, as I said, very aggressively on getting more humanitarian assistance into Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very focused on the hostages held by Hamas, including the Americans, and we are doing everything possible to bring them home,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said in a statement both Blinken and Fidan \u201cemphasized the importance of the longstanding U.S.-Turkish cooperation as NATO Allies and Euro-Atlantic security priorities including Sweden\u2019s NATO accession.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blinken did not meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has been highly critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an outlier among NATO allies in not expressing full support for Israel\u2019s right to defend itself.<\/p>\n
As the Blinken-Fidan meeting got underway, dozens of protesters from an Islamist group waved Turkish and Palestinian flags and held up anti-U.S. and anti-Israel placards outside the Foreign Ministry. Police earlier in the day dispersed a group of students marching toward the ministry chanting \u201cmurderer Blinken, get out of Turkey!\u201d<\/p>\n
Also Monday, about 150 people rallied outside the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, carrying a large banner that read: \u201cNo to genocide!\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the second day of protests denouncing Blinken\u2019s visit. On Sunday, pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with Turkish riot police outside the U.S.-Turkish Incirlik military air base in the southern city of Adana. Police fired tear gas and water cannon as the demonstrators tried to cross fields to enter the base.<\/p>\n
Turkish officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks, said Fidan had urged Blinken to prevent the targeting of civilians in Gaza and their forced displacement, and also press for a \u201cfull cease-fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blinken\u2019s mission, his second to the region since the war began, has found only tepid, if any, support for his efforts to contain the fallout from the conflict. Israel has rejected the idea of pauses while Arab and Muslim nations are instead demanding an immediate cease-fire as the casualty toll soars among Palestinian civilians under Israeli bombardments of Gaza.<\/p>\n
U.S. officials are seeking to convince Israel of the strategic importance of respecting the laws of war by protecting non-combatants and significantly boosting deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza\u2019s beleaguered civilian population.<\/p>\n
It remained unclear, however, if Netanyahu would agree to temporary, rolling pauses in the massive operation to eradicate Hamas \u2014 or whether outrage among Palestinians and their supporters could be assuaged if he did.<\/p>\n
Already Jordan and Turkey have recalled their ambassadors to Israel to protest its tactics and the tide of international opinion appears to be turning from sympathy toward Israel in the aftermath of Oct. 7 to revulsion as images of death and destruction in Gaza spread around the world.<\/p>\n
On Saturday in the Jordanian capital of Amman, both the Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers appeared at a joint news conference with Blinken. The two said Israel\u2019s war had gone beyond self-defense and could no longer be justified as it now amounted to collective punishment of the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n
That sentiment was echoed by tens of thousands of demonstrators who marched in the streets of world capitals over the weekend to protest Israel and condemn U.S. support for Israel.<\/p>\n
From Turkey, Blinken headed to Asia where the Gaza conflict will likely share top billing with other international crises at a series of events in Japan, South Korea and India \u2014 including Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine and North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons program.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Blinken flew from the occupied West Bank, where he held talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to Baghdad for talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.<\/p>\n
When word spread of Blinken\u2019s arrival in the West Bank city of Ramallah, dozens of Palestinians turned out to protest, holding signs showing dripping blood and with messages that included, \u201cBlinken blood is on your hands.\u201d The meeting with Abbas ended without any public comment.<\/p>\n
The Palestinian Authority administers semiautonomous areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It has not been a factor in the Gaza Strip since 2007, when Hamas seized control after winning in elections there a year earlier. Abbas himself is unpopular among Palestinians.<\/p>\n
American forces in the region face a surge of attacks by Iranian-allied militias in Iraq and elsewhere. U.S. forces shot down another one-way attack drone Sunday that was targeting American and coalition troops near their base in neighboring Syria, a U.S. official said. From Baghdad Blinken traveled to Turkey.<\/p>\n
The Biden administration, while remaining the strongest backer of Israel\u2019s military response to Hamas\u2019 attacks on Oct. 7, is increasingly seeking to use its influence with Israel to try to temper the effect of Israel\u2019s weeks of complete siege and near round-the-clock air, ground and sea assaults in Gaza, home to 2.3 million civilians.<\/p>\n
Arab states are resisting American suggestions that they play a larger role in resolving the crisis, expressing outrage at the civilian toll of the Israeli military operations and believing Gaza to be a problem largely of Israel\u2019s own making.<\/p>\n
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ANKARA, Turkey, 6 Nov (AP) \u2014 U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up a grueling Middle East diplomatic tour on Monday in Turkey after only limited success in efforts to forge a regional consensus on how best to ease civilian suffering in Gaza as Israel intensifies its war against Hamas. In the Turkish capital, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-227958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}