Blinken will visit the Mideast again this week. What can he achieve?
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken is returning to the Middle East on his seventh diplomatic mission to the region since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began more than six months ago, the State Department said Saturday.
Blinken is traveling to Saudi Arabia on Monday, just two days since arriving back in Washington after a trip to China. Blinken will attend a World Economic Forum conference and meet with Arab foreign ministers in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
An Israeli foreign ministry official says Blinken will visit Israel on Tuesday, a stop not mentioned in the State Department’s announcement about Blinken’s itinerary.
His latest Mideast trip, on the heels of meetings in China with President Xi Jinping and other high-ranking officials, comes as the war grinds on, with more than 34,000 Palestinians killed, hundreds of thousands displaced and a steadily worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. In the surprise attack by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7 that triggered the war, about 1,200 people were killed and about 250 people abducted.