The Israel Hamas war currently concentrated in Gaza “could easily metastasize” beyond the Palestinian territory as “profound tension” in the region raises the prospect of a wider conflict, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday during an ongoing trip to the Middle East.
Such fighting would “cause even more insecurity and suffering,” Blinken told reporters in Doha, Qatar, alongside Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.
Blinken is roughly halfway through a nine-stop tour around the Middle East, his fourth diplomatic mission since the war began after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel killed 1,200.
Blinken has more meetings with Arab leaders in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia before heading to Israel and Egypt. De-escalation, he said, “is at the heart” of these discussions amid repeated altercations in the Red Sea, at the Israeli-Lebanese border and in Iraq and Syria.
U.S. officials have said militant groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis, in Lebanon and Yemen, as well as Iranian-backed proxy fighters, are behind some of the incidents. The Israel Hamas war
Looking ahead to his meetings with Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv and the West Bank set for early this week, Blinken said Sunday, “I will also raise the imperative of doing more to prevent civilian casualties. Far too many Palestinians, innocent Palestinians, have already been killed.”
The secretary of state, like other U.S. officials including President Joe Biden, have sought to stress their support for Israel’s retaliatory operations against Hamas while calling for Israel to do as much as possible to curb civilian casualties in light of the ongoing onslaught in Gaza and high death toll.
The Israeli military insists it takes steps to avoid attacking non-Hamas fighters, and Israeli officials often say that Hamas embeds itself in civilian infrastructure, essentially using it as a shield, in violation of international law.
The death toll in Gaza surpassed 22,800 as of Sunday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, amid repeated calls from Arab leaders for a broad cease-fire, including from Al Thani, who’s also the Qatari minister for foreign affairs and a key figure in negotiations over freeing the more than 100 hostages thought to still be held in Gaza.