Earlier in the day, Mr Blinken met with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has helped mediate two ceasefires between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza since Mr Biden took office. Mr Blinken later told reporters that he had discussed the current crisis with the Egyptian leader.
New armed groups of young PalestiniansFriction under occupation and the creation of a two-tier legal system that differentiates between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank emerged last year, increasing the number of Palestinian attacks against Israelis.
But Mr. Abbas is in a weak position to maintain order. The Palestinian Authority controls most Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, but its grip on areas outside Ramallah, where Mr Abbas is accused of autocratic behavior, is loosening, especially in cities like Jenin and Nablus, where the most active insurgents are established. .
Mr Abbas has long avoided fully enforcing authority control in those cities, where public distaste for the body is already high amid widespread perceptions that it is corrupt and has too close a relationship with Israel. On Saturday, the authority released a statement holding Israel responsible for the escalation, ignoring Israeli calls for Palestinian leaders to condemn Palestinian violence.
After months of public pressure, Mr. Abbas scaled back the authority’s coordination with Israeli security forces last week, after a Israeli operation in Jenin to arrest several gunmen that killed 10 Palestinians. Notwithstanding American pressure to restore the coordination mechanism, say analysts Mr Abbas may be reluctant to do so without some kind of Israeli or American concession to the Palestinians.
Palestinian officials have said they will ask the International Criminal Court to investigate the Jenin operation, a move opposed by the Biden administration. Last week, a State Department spokesman, Vedant Patel, told reporters that the United States did not believe “multilateral forums” were appropriate for such pursuits, saying that Israel and the Palestinians should work directly with each other to abdicate any responsibility. to be determined in such cases. .
Although the Biden administration has restored funding to Palestinian institutions that were scrapped during the Trump administration, Palestinian officials are frustrated that the president has not repealed other Trump-era policies that Palestinians view as obstacles to statehood.