Dozens protest outside Blinken, Herzog meeting in Tel Aviv

By Abdelraouf Arnaout

JERUSALEM (AA) - Dozens of people demonstrated on Tuesday in front of the hotel where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli President Isaac Herzog met in Tel Aviv, demanding the release of hostages.

The protesters carried banners, and chanted slogans calling on US President Joe Biden to help release Israeli captives held in Gaza during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. They also called for a cease-fire, and another hostage-prisoner swap deal.

Blinken, on his fourth mission to the region since October, met Herzog, and counterpart Israel Katz, and is due to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others.

The visit seeks to avoid turning the offensive in Gaza into a wider regional conflict, urge Israel to decrease the number of casualties in Gaza, increase humanitarian aid and ensure that Palestinians are not forcibly displaced from the enclave.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, killing more than 23,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring nearly 59,000 others, according to local health authorities.

Israel says 1,200 people were killed in the initial Hamas incursion, and that Palestinian groups still hold more than 100 hostages of the 240 held in October.

The onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicines.

Israel, which has so far rejected growing calls for a cease-fire, is said to be under pressure from the US to scale back the assault.

*Writing by Mahmoud Barakat