US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was wrapping up a Middle East diplomatic tour on Monday in Turkey after only limited success in his efforts to forge a regional consensus on how best to ease civilian suffering in Gaza as Israel intensifies its war against Hamas.
Mr Blinken met in the Turkish capital of Ankara with foreign minister Hakan Fidan after 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’s proposal for “humanitarian pauses” to Israel’s relentless military campaign in Gaza.
Mr Blinken’s 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 9,700 Palestinians.
The top US 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’ deadly October 7th incursion into southern Israel, while also preventing the conflict from spreading regionally.
Neither Mr Blinken nor Mr Fidan spoke as they posed for photographers ahead of their formal talks in Ankara and the top US diplomat was not going to meet with Turkish president Recep Tayyep Erdogan who has been highly critical of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and an outlier among Nato allies in not expressing full support for Israel’s right to defend itself.
Outside the Foreign Ministry, dozens of protesters from an Islamist group carried Turkish and Palestinian flags and held up anti-US and anti-Israel placards as the Blinken-Fidan meeting got under way.
Earlier Monday, police dispersed a group of students marching toward the ministry chanting “murderer Blinken, get out of Turkey!”
It was the second day of protests denouncing Mr Blinken’s visit in Turkey.
On Sunday, pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with Turkish riot police outside the US-Turkish Incirlik military air base in Adana, in southern Turkey.
Police fired tear gas and water cannon as the demonstrators tried to cross fields to enter the base.
Several hundreds also marched to the US Embassy in Ankara on Sunday, chanting “God is great”.
Mr Blinken’s mission, his second to the region since the war began, has found only tepid, if any, support.
Israel has rejected the idea of pauses while Arab and Muslim nations are instead demanding an immediate ceasefire as the casualty toll soars among Palestinian civilians under Israeli bombardments of Gaza.
US 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’s beleaguered civilian population.
It remained unclear, however, if Mr Netanyahu would agree to temporary, rolling pauses in the massive operation to eradicate Hamas — or whether outrage among Palestinians and their supporters could be assuaged if he did.
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 October 7th to revulsion as images of death and destruction in Gaza spread around the world.
On Saturday in the Jordanian capital of Amman, both the Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers appeared at a joint news conference with Mr Blinken.
The two said Israel’s war had gone beyond self-defence and could no longer be justified as it now amounted to collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
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 US support for Israel.
After finishing his talks in Turkey, Mr Blinken will head 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, including Russia’s war on Ukraine and North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.
On Sunday, Mr 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.
US forces in the region face a surge of attacks by Iranian-allied militias in Iraq and elsewhere.
US forces shot down another one-way attack drone Sunday that was targeting American and coalition troops near their base in neighbouring Syria, a US official said.
From Baghdad Mr Blinken travelled to Turkey.
The Biden administration, while remaining the strongest backer of Israel’s military response to Hamas’ attacks on October 7th, is increasingly seeking to use its influence with Israel to try to temper the effect of Israel’s weeks of complete siege and near round-the-clock air, ground and sea assaults in Gaza, home to 2.3 million civilians.
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’s own making.
