The Qatari government has pledged $500 million to support reconstruction in the Gaza Strip after an 11-day war between the territory’s Hamas rulers and Israel that killed 250 people, mostly Gazans.

Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, foreign minister of the energy-rich Gulf country, made the announcement on Twitter on Wednesday.

“We will continue to support our brothers in Palestine in order to reach a just and lasting solution by establishing their independent state,” he wrote.

Qatar has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian and development aid to Gaza in attempts to support past cease-fires with Israel.

It came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken jetted to Egypt on Wednesday as he pressed ahead with a diplomatic mission aimed at shoring up a cease-fire that ended an 11-day war between Israel and the Gaza Strip's ruling Hamas militant group.

Blinken landed in Cairo a day after holding intensive talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. In Egypt, he met with President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and other top officials. Later he traveled to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah II.

Blinken has vowed to “rally international support” to rebuild the destruction in hard-hit Gaza while promising to make sure that none of the aid reaches Hamas. He is instead trying to bolster Hamas' rival, the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority.

Blinken has set modest goals for the trip, his first official visit to the Middle East as secretary of state. His main goals have been to help rebuild Gaza and lower the tensions in contested Jerusalem that helped fuel the war.

But he has made it made clear the U.S. has no immediate plans to pursue peace talks between the sides and done little to address the underlying causes of the decades-long conflict, though he expressed hope for creating a “better environment” that might lead to negotiations.