Antony Blinken is traveling to the Middle East this Monday to encourage a truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
This visit by the American Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Secretary of State according to the American qualification, comes while fighting and bombings continue unabated.
As the war enters its fifth month on Wednesday, the Israeli army again bombed Khan Younes on Sunday, in the south of the territory where, according to it, leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement are hiding.
She claimed to have invested a complex used by the Islamist movement Hamas to prepare for the bloody attack of October 7, 2023. It served, according to the army, as a training center.
Still according to the army, Mohammad Sinouar had an office in this building.
This senior commander of the armed wing of Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, is the brother of Yahya Sinouar, the leader of the movement in the Gaza Strip and considered the mastermind of October 7.
132 more hostages, 27 declared dead
Strikes also targeted Rafah, further south, hitting a kindergarten.
More than 1.3 million people who fled the fighting that devastated the besieged territory are crowded into this city, according to the United Nations.
Fears are growing over a possible military offensive against Rafah, located on the closed border with Egypt.
On the diplomatic front, negotiations are continuing to reach a second truce, after that of a week at the end of November.
Around a hundred hostages held in Gaza were then exchanged for Palestinians held by Israel.
132 hostages are still being held.
Among them, 27 were declared dead by the army.
Also read: Israel-Hamas war: is the truce proposal really likely to succeed?
Antony Blinken, whose country is Israel's main supporter, begins his fifth trip to the region since Saudi Arabia started the war.
He is also scheduled to visit Qatar, Egypt, Israel and the occupied West Bank.
While saying it continues to support “Israel's right to defend itself,” the United States displays growing frustration with the Israeli government.
In Israel, Blinken will put pressure on to increase the delivery of food, water and medicine to the Gaza Strip.
“This will be one of his main priorities,” said presidential adviser Jake Sullivan.
Hamas demands total ceasefire
In Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, a Hamas official, Osama Hamdane, considered it premature on Saturday to talk about an agreement on a truce.
The project drawn up by the Qatari, American and Egyptian mediators in Paris at the end of January is “a framework agreement which needs to be studied” by the Palestinian movement, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
Hamas, which took power in Gaza in 2007, is demanding a complete ceasefire.
This is what Benjamin Netanyahu refuses despite pressure from the families of the hostages who demonstrate almost daily to demand the release of their loved ones.
On the ground, northern Israel is also targeted daily from the border with Lebanon, stronghold of Lebanese Hezbollah.
The Israeli army said on Sunday that it had destroyed sites from where, it said, the Shiite movement, one of Hamas's regional allies, launched missiles.
Tensions also continue in the Red Sea, where maritime traffic is threatened by the Yemeni Houthi rebels, close to Iran, who say they are in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
On Sunday, the US military announced that it had destroyed five Houthi cruise missiles during air raids in Yemen, four of which were intended to attack ships and the fifth land targets.