Biden in Israel Wednesday for solidarity visit – Blinken
TEL AVIV — US President Joe Biden will pay a “solidarity” visit to Israel today, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said early Tuesday, following nearly eight hours of talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on ensuring the protection of civilians in Gaza. The conflict intruded firsthand on the talks as air sirens went off. Blinken, Netanyahu and aides took shelter in a bunker for five minutes, with waiting journalists ushered down a stairwell, before the US-backed Iron Dome system destroyed the incoming rocket. “The President will reaffirm United States solidarity with Israel and our ironclad commitment to its security,” said the top US diplomat. Blinken said Biden would hear a firsthand account on Israel’s military needs and work with Congress to fulfill them. He also said the US President hopes to “hear from Israel how it will conduct its operations in a way that minimizes civilian casualties and enables humanitarian assistance to flow to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not benefit Hamas.” In Washington, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the US president would visit Tel Aviv, then would travel onward to Jordan to see King Abdullah II, a key US partner, as well as Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Plan for civilians Washington has backed Israel’s right to strike back at Hamas, but it has also urged measures to ease the impact on ordinary Palestinians caught in the crossfire. Blinken said that Israel promised to work with the United States on letting in foreign assistance, adding that the two sides agreed to “develop a plan.” Officials did not set a timeline but expected David Satterfield, a veteran former US ambassador who started a new job on Monday coordinating humanitarian aid, to work out details. Israel’s airstrikes have flattened entire neighborhoods in the blockaded Gaza Strip and killed at least 2,750 people, most of them civilians. The bombardment, coupled with an Israeli order to evacuate the north of the Gaza Strip that borders Israel, has forced more than a million Palestinians to flee their homes for the south of the enclave since the 10-day conflict began, according to UNRWA, the UN agency serving Palestinian agencies. Entire families, young children and the elderly have packed what belongings they can, bedding down in any available space, indoors and out. Thousands more Palestinians have massed at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in an
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