US Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a planned visit to the Kerem Shalom Crossing, Hebrew daily Haaretz reports, despite Blinken telling a Channel 13 journalist during a press briefing last night, “There was no planned visit to Kerem Shalom, so there was nothing to cancel.”
According to Haaretz, the visit to the Israel-Gaza border crossing was canceled after Israel failed to ensure the US official that the entry of humanitarian aid into the war-torn Gaza Strip would not be interrupted by protests amid his visit.
For the last two weeks, the right-wing Israeli protest group Tzav 9 has held protests close to the border crossing on a near-daily basis in an attempt to prevent trucks carrying humanitarian aid into the Strip, as it believes no support should be given to Gaza while hostages remain in the enclave.
Channel 12 reports that the protesters were forcibly removed by the police this evening after preventing all aid from entering Gaza, but they have vowed to return next week.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancelled a planned visit to Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing with Gaza after Israeli officials told him they could not guarantee that aid convoys would not be disrupted by Israeli protesters who have been trying to block humanitarian aid from entering the beleaguered Strip for more than a week.
The demonstrators have been demanding an end to the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, where health and assistance officials say that Israel’s campaign has created a humanitarian catastrophe and put hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians at risk of starvation.
Israeli army radio corroborated this report, saying that air raid sirens had been triggered in the region and that “dozens” of rockets were seen heading towards the Meron area.
