Blinken Promises More Aid for Palestinians, Praises Netanyahu

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken kicked off a Middle East diplomatic mission with a pledge to help reconstruction efforts in Gaza, left battered after an 11-day conflict with Israel, while reaffirming support for Israel’s right to defend itself.

Following a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday, Blinken said the U.S. would provide $75 million in new aid this year, in addition to $5.5 million in immediate disaster assistance and $32 million to a United Nations refugee agency that helps Palestinians.

Reflecting that the 11-day conflict was between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip -- not the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank -- Blinken said “we will work to ensure that Hamas doesn’t benefit from these reconstruction efforts.”

Earlier in the day Blinken stood beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and vouched for the U.S.’s commitment to Israel’s right of self-defense. He reiterated a promise President Joe Biden made last week that the U.S. will replenish Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense system, which intercepted many rockets from Gaza that would have otherwise struck civilian targets.

While the two allies appeared in sync about their approach to the Palestinians, there was distance between them over the Biden administration’s intention to revive the deal that ended most economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

What Is Israel’s Iron Dome Anti-Rocket System?: QuickTake

Netanyahu is vehemently opposed to resuscitating the accord with Iran, which it regards as its biggest national security threat, and had backed former President Donald Trump when he pulled out of the agreement.

The 2015 nuclear deal with Iran “paves the way for Iran to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons with international legitimacy,” Netanyahu said. Blinken said the U.S. will consult “closely with Israel” about the discussions in Vienna to rejoin the nuclear agreement while continuing “to work together to counter Iran’s destabilizing actions in the region,” Blinken said.

Blinken’s Mideast trip will next take him to Cairo and Amman on Wednesday to meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi before heading back to Washington.

Israel and Hamas agreed last week to an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire that ended an 11-day conflict that killed more than 250 people in the Palestinian territory and 13 in Israel. Israeli airstrikes pummeled civilian infrastructure in Gaza including hospitals and residential buildings, saying Hamas was hiding behind civilians as it attacked Israel.

Complicated Reconstruction

Reconstruction is always complicated in Gaza because Israel and donor countries don’t want money or materials to fall into the hands of Hamas, which is labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union and other nations. The U.S. is looking for ways to have the Palestinian Authority, in concert with the United Nations, lead the reconstruction efforts, a State Department official told reporters on Monday.

In his comments with Netanyahu and before the trip, Blinken had underscored how limited the U.S. vision is for the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He didn’t call for a new peace process or press the two sides to start down the road toward the two-state solution that the Biden administration backs in principle. Instead he made clear the U.S. goal is to make the cease-fire stick, get aid to the Palestinians and try to restore some semblance of calm.

It was a far different tone from that taken by Blinken’s predecessor under Trump, Michael Pompeo, who visited last November after Biden won the election and infuriated the Palestinians by visiting an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

The Biden administration has pulled back the unabashed support Israel got from Trump’s White House by restarting aid to the Palestinians through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and looking for ways to empower the Palestinian Authority at the expense of Hamas, which has now fought four bloody conflicts with Israel since rising to power in Gaza in 2007.

Blinken said Tuesday that the U.S. will reopen a consulate in Jerusalem that served as the de facto liaison office for the Palestinians. Trump merged the consulate’s work into the newly designated Jerusalem embassy in 2019, a move that the Palestinians considered a slap in the face.

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