Blinken to push Israeli-Palestinian de-escalation
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STORY: In new bloodshed, Palestinian officials said Israeli troops killed a 26-year-old man at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank. The army said troops opened fire on the man's car after he rammed into one of them and attempted to flee an inspection.
Israel is on high alert after a Palestinian opened fire in a street outside a synagogue on Friday (January 27), killing seven people in the worst such attack in the Jerusalem area for over a decade. That followed an Israeli raid on the West Bank town of Jenin on Thursday in which 10 Palestinians, mostly gunmen, were killed.
"There is no question that this is a very difficult moment," Blinken told reporters in Cairo before departing for Tel Aviv. In meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Blinken said, "we will be ... encouraging the parties to take steps to calm things down, to de-escalate tensions."
The last round of U.S.-sponsored talks on founding a Palestinian state alongside Israel stalled in 2014.
