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| Antony Blinken |
The u.s secretary of state Anthony blinken is in israel to try to consolidate the ceasefire with the Palestinians following the worst flare-up of violence in years let's go straight to laura trevelyan who joins us from jerusalem now he arrived a few hours ago the ceasefire's still in place laura is that what he's still trying to uphold rather than pushing on with any concrete peace talks at the moment yes that's right tim quite modest aims at least publicly for the top american diplomat as he's here on this tour of the middle east his first since taking office right now he's meeting the israeli prime minister Benjamin netanyahu in the prime minister's office here in jerusalem and of course even that itself is contested the Israelis claim jerusalem as their capital but the Palestinians want east jerusalem to be the capital of their eventual state so everything here is so symbolic and so freighted but yes anthony blinken is here to make sure the ceasefire is upheld to get humanitarian aid into gaza something that israel's cooperation is required for because it controls the entry to the strip along with egypt and then he wants to talk about the massive reconstruction effort for gaza after the bombing again very contentious with the Israelis because they do not want the reconstruction effort for that money to be diverted by hamas so that they make more rockets to fire at Israel neither do the americans the americans objective is to try to strengthen the palestinian authority in the west bank and somehow reengage them in the gaza strip very difficult given hamas control the gaza strip and there's a lot of rivalry so all of this on anthony blinken's agenda he meets first with prime minister netanyahu followed by a press conference and then this afternoon he goes to ramallah in the west bank and he meets the head of the Palestinian authority mahmoud abbas but but no talks though with hamas as was made absolutely clear a few days ago by joe biden but as you say i mean hamas is in control in gaza and abu mazen abbas has has stopped elections on the west bank for fear of losing to hamas there as well so why are the americans negotiating with somebody who isn't really wielding any power at all well the americans won't negotiate directly with hamas because they regard it as a terrorist organization and there are all kinds of laws in america which prevent direct negotiation and the flow of aid to terrorist organizations which is why it's very complicated this question of getting aid into gaza through the Palestinian authority somehow as the americans want to do with the united nations so all of this will be discussed but anthony blinken also is going on to egypt and to jordan remember it's the egyptians who talk to hamas directly they're the only ones who can speak both to hamas and to the israelis they brokered this ceasefire they're doing the heavy lifting on the details to keep it going the Egyptian foreign minister has been here back and forth between gaza and the west bank the last few days uh so the americans are here for the big picture but let's make sure this ceasefire holds then anthony blinker will go on to talk to the egyptians about the detail and he'll meet with the jordanians and by the way the Jordanians key to perhaps trying to calm down this inter-communal violence that we're seeing here in Jerusalem the disputed al-aqsa mosque one of the holiest places in islam where religious nationalist jews increasingly want to pray something which is causing tension with palestinians because the Jordanians control that access to the mosque they could be key in trying to come up with some kind of resolution to this simmering conflict just yesterday tim two israelis were stabbed here on the street their assailant was shot dead yeah just briefly laura it was president trump who controversially moved the u.s embassy from tel aviv to jerusalem is it still there any plans by the biden administration to reverse that the bride administration is not going to move the embassy but what they could do is open the consulate here for the Palestinians this is something that would reopen relations with the Palestinians and president biden was very careful to say when anthony blinken left on his trip that one of the purposes of this trip is to restore relations with the palestinians because they've been abandoned for so long and senior state department officials said basically relations with the palestinians have been missing in action on background as it was put for some years so that's also the purpose of this trip to re-engage the palestinians and make them feel that this isn't quite such a one-sided process okay laura uh with the very latest on jerusalem thanks very much.
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