Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a trip to the Middle East, where he would meet senior leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to “discuss the right architecture for a lasting peace”. Unusually, Blinken made no mention of a stop in Israel itself, and the Israeli foreign ministry said it had received no notification to prepare for one.
In Rafah, dazed survivors walked through the ruins of a home on Tuesday morning, one of several buildings hit in overnight Israeli air strikes that killed 14 people in the city. At a nearby hospital morgue, relatives wailed beside corpses laid out on the cobbles. A woman peeled back a tiny bloodstained shroud to reveal the face of a small boy, rocking him back and forth in her arms.
“There’s US support, European support and support of the whole world for Israel, they support them with weapons and planes,” said one of the mourners, Ibrahim Hasouna.
“They mock us and send four or five airdrops (of aid) just to save their faces.”
The international hunger monitor relied on by the United Nations said on Monday that Gaza’s food shortages had already far surpassed famine levels, and Gazans would soon be dying of hunger at famine-scale rates without an immediate truce. The UN says that is impossible without better access and security, both of which it says are Israel’s responsibility. PEACE TALKS RESUME IN QATARCeasefire talks are resuming this week in Qatar after Israel rejected a Hamas counter-proposal last week. An Israeli delegation headed by the country’s spy chief travelled to Qatar on Monday, although an Israeli official said Israel believed any agreement would take at least two weeks to nail down.
