US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Egypt at the start of a Middle East trip on which he will look to notch down Israeli-Palestinian tensions after an eruption of violence.
Mr Blinken, who will travel on Monday and Tuesday to Jerusalem and Ramallah after his stop on Sunday in Cairo, had long planned the visit to see Israel’s new government, but the trip has taken on new urgency after some of the worst violence in years.
A Palestinian gunman on Friday killed seven people outside a synagogue in a settler neighbourhood of east Jerusalem, and another attack followed on Saturday. Ten people were killed in an Israeli army raid on Thursday on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, in one of the deadliest such operations.
Israel said it was targeting Islamic Jihad militants and later hit sites in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire.
Israel on Sunday prepared to demolish the east Jerusalem family home of the Synagogue gunman as part of measures to punish the relatives of attackers.
In the first concrete move, Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet said the east Jerusalem home of 21-year-old Khayri Alqam – shot dead by police following Friday’s attack – “will be sealed immediately ahead of its demolition”.
Read the article by Leon Bruneau in The Australian.