Blinken back to Middle East for tough talks on regional de-escalation
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00:00 US Special Envoy Amos Hochstein met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.
00:06 Hochstein was in Tel Aviv to smooth tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.
00:10 The visit proceeds won by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken,
00:14 who will visit Israel and the West Bank on a whistle-stop tour over the next week.
00:18 It is Blinken's fourth visit to the region in three months.
00:22 Among his concerns will be to prevent a regional conflagration.
00:26 He will focus on, as he has consistently since October 7th,
00:30 preventing the conflict from expanding. It is in no one's interest, not Israel's,
00:35 not the region's, not the world's, for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza.
00:39 But the visit is overshadowed by events that threaten to widen the scope of the conflict,
00:45 such as the drone strike attributed to Israel which killed Hamas deputy leader Saleh Al-Rouri
00:50 in Beirut on Tuesday, which prompted a defiant rebuke from former Hamas leader Khaled Michel.
00:57 "In light of his failure, his confusion and the double loss of his soldiers,
01:02 he wants to bring his crisis abroad. He wants to widen the scope of the conflict.
01:08 He thinks that this will increase the accountability of the resistance and the region.
01:12 He also thinks that his assassination of the leader will break the will of the resistance
01:17 and weaken the leadership. He knows that this is a big illusion."
01:22 Israel's Defence Minister Yov Galant on Thursday laid out his vision for the next phase of the war
01:28 in Gaza. He envisions a scaled-down approach while continuing to fight Hamas in the south
01:33 of the exclave for as long as possible. But there weren't too many details of the
01:37 planned forthcoming. Galant is expected to submit it to the war cabinet this week.