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US secretary of state Antony Blinken said he had held “extensive discussions” about the tensions between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah, as Washington redoubles its efforts to prevent the Jewish state’s war with Hamas spilling over into a broader regional conflict.
Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hizbollah have been trading cross-border fire since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, but despite casualties on both sides the fighting has not escalated into a full-on conflict amid intense US-led diplomatic efforts to contain the situation.
However, fears of a broader conflagration have risen in the past week after a senior Hamas leader was killed in Beirut in a suspected Israeli missile strike.
Hizbollah, an ally of Hamas, responded by firing 62 missiles at Israel on Saturday. Israel killed two senior Hizbollah figures on Monday and Tuesday.
Speaking in Tel Aviv after meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials, Blinken stressed the US was “fully committed” to finding a diplomatic solution, and that an escalation was “in no one’s interest”.
“No one is seeking it,” he said. “No one wants to see other fronts opened in this conflict.”
Blinken also warned Yemen-based Houthi militants who have been carrying out attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, and Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria, which have targeted US forces in the region, that they would face consequences if they continued their actions.
“If our forces are threatened or attacked we’ll take appropriate steps,” he said.
In a press conference on his fourth visit to the Middle East since the war began on October 7, Blinken said that, despite the hostilities, there was still a “clear interest in pursuing” the normalisation of ties between Israel and other countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia.
“But it’s equally clear that that’s not in substitute for or at the expense of a political horizon for the Palestinians, and ultimately a Palestinian state,” he said.
“On the contrary, that piece has to be part of any integration efforts, any normalisation efforts. That was very clear in my conversations during the course of this trip, including in Saudi Arabia.”
Israel declared war on Hamas after the Palestinian militant group launched a surprise attack on the Jewish state on October 7, during which its fighters killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took another 240 hostage.
In response, Israel launched a devastating offensive in Hamas’s Gaza stronghold, which has killed more than 23,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, displaced 1.9mn of the coastal enclave’s 2.3mn population, and rendered huge swaths of the territory uninhabitable.
Israeli officials have said they are moving to a less intense phase of warfare in Gaza, but Blinken stressed the civilian death toll, particularly among children, was still “far too high”, and that Israel needed to do more to allow humanitarian aid into the strip.
He added Israel had agreed to a UN assessment mission to Gaza to determine what needed to be done to allow Palestinians displaced by the Israeli assault to return to their homes in the north of the territory.
“This is not going to happen overnight,” Blinken said. “There are serious security, infrastructure and humanitarian challenges, but the mission will start a process that evaluates these obstacles and how they can be overcome.”
In recent days, far-right members of Netanyahu’s government have called for Israel to re-establish settlements in Gaza, and for Palestinians to be voluntarily moved elsewhere.
Blinken said he had made “crystal clear” to Israeli officials that Palestinian civilians should be allowed to return to their homes as soon as possible, and reiterated Washington’s opposition to any attempts to pressure them to move elsewhere.
“I told the prime minister: the US unequivocally rejects any proposals advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside Gaza,” he added.
“The prime minister reaffirmed to me today that this is not the policy of Israel’s government.”
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