US secretary of state Antony Blinken spoke to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas about reforming the Palestinian self-rule government, as part of efforts to ally the region behind post-war plans for Gaza that also include concrete steps toward a Palestinian state.
Mr Blinken says he has secured commitments from multiple countries in the region to assist with rebuilding and governing Gaza after Israel’s war against Hamas, and that wider Israeli-Arab normalisation is still possible, but only if there is “a pathway to a Palestinian state”.
In their meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Mr Blinken told Mr Abbas that the US supports “tangible steps towards the creation of a Palestinian state”, according to US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.
He said the two discussed administrative reform.
The vision outlined by Mr Blinken faces serious obstacles.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government is adamantly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and the autocratic, Western-backed Palestinian leadership, whose forces were driven from Gaza when Hamas took over in 2007, lacks legitimacy in the view of many Palestinians.
The war in Gaza is still raging with no end in sight, fuelling a humanitarian catastrophe in the tiny coastal enclave.
The fighting has also stoked escalating violence between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants that has raised fears of a wider conflict.
On his fourth visit to the region since the war began three months ago, Mr Blinken has met in recent days with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
