Weapons personnel on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. The Pentagon has ordered the Ford carrier strike group to sail to the Eastern Mediterranean to be ready to assist Israel. Photo / AP
Weapons personnel on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. The Pentagon has ordered the Ford carrier strike group to sail to the Eastern Mediterranean to be ready to assist Israel. Photo / AP
Jordan has warned that the Middle East is at the edge of an “abyss”, as the death toll increases in the Israel-Hamas war and diplomatic activity intensifies to prevent it from spiralling into a regional conflict.
King Abdullah of Jordan delivered his warning — together with a call for humanitarianassistance to the Gaza Strip and a refusal to take in Palestinian refugees — ahead of a summit with US President Joe Biden in Amman on Wednesday.
“The whole region is on the brink of falling into the abyss,” the king told a press conference in Berlin with the German chancellor Olaf Scholz. “The threat that this conflict spreads is real; the costs are too high for everyone.”
The FT could not verify the report. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) told the AP news agency that it could not immediately confirm or deny the report.
As tensions rose in Gaza, which the Israeli military is bombarding in response to Hamas’s attack this month, Israel accused Iran of “escalating the situation” in its northern border region with Lebanon.
A day after Tehran warned that the Islamist militants it backs could resort to “pre-emptive” attacks, exchanges of fire intensified between the IDF and Iran’s ally Hizbollah, the south Lebanon-based militia.
The IDF said it would hold “the sovereign state of Lebanon... responsible for the terrorism from within its territory.
An IDF spokesman warned Hizbollah and Lebanon itself “to look very carefully, how we are dismantling Hamas in the Gaza Strip leader by leader, terrorist by terrorist and indeed infrastructure by infrastructure. We will exert a serious price.”
On a trip to Tel Aviv later on Tuesday, Scholz said: “We have to stop a regional conflagration,” adding that he was talking to the leaders of both Israel and Egypt about getting aid into Gaza.
He added: “No actor should think it a good idea to intervene in this conflict from outside. It would be a grave, unforgivable mistake. In the past few days, we have passed on this message through the most diverse channels to those it is directed at.”
Palestinian boys sit on the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, October 16, 2023. Photo / AP
The US has already deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups to the region to deter Iran and Hizbollah and the Pentagon said on Tuesday it had put a further 2000 troops on a “prepare to deploy order”.
Wednesday’s summit in Amman will include Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, while Biden will first travel to Israel to show solidarity and try to influence the conduct of the war.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that, at Washington’s request, the US and Israel have agreed to “develop a plan” to get aid to Gaza residents and potentially create “areas to help keep civilians out of harm’s way”.
As negotiations continue ahead of Biden’s trip, Israel says that any “safe zones” to which humanitarian aid can be provided will have to be in the south of the enclave.
The US, which estimates that 500 to 600 of its nationals are trapped in the enclave, is also seeking an exit for third-country passport holders out of Gaza.
But, despite international efforts, the Rafah crossing between southern Gaza and Egypt — the prospective conduit for both refugees and humanitarian aid — has remained closed.
Some foreign officials have said Israel, which has ordered almost half of Gaza’s population to move to the south of the enclave, is prepared to let people leave the territory for Egypt, but is resisting the entry of humanitarian aid.
By contrast, Egypt has said it would allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, while insisting it would only permit people with dual citizenship into its territory.
King Abdullah said admitting refugees was a “red line” for Jordan and for Egypt, which borders Gaza.
“No refugees into Jordan and no refugees into Egypt either,” the king added. “That’s a situation that must be dealt with inside Gaza and the West Bank and the burden shouldn’t be borne on others’ shoulders.”
The Israeli military says Hamas has also taken 199 hostages, and labels a video released by the group of one of the abductees as “psychological warfare, Isis playbook material”. The video shows Mia Shem, a 21-year-old Israeli-French hostage.
Palestinian health officials say Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 3000 people and report that more than 1000 are missing in the rubble.
Palestinian authorities said on Tuesday that Israeli air strikes overnight had killed more than 70 people in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, and the nearby area.
The UN said one of its schools in central Gaza had also been hit, killing at least six people, in what it said was “a flagrant disregard for the lives of civilians”.
- Additional reporting by Neri Zilber, Donato Paolo Mancini and Raya Jalabi
Written by: Mai Khaled, Guy Chazan, Mehul Srivastava and Felicia Schwartz
