Reaffirming the Two-State Solution After Meeting Israeli PM, US Secretary of State Blinken: It's Everyone's Responsibility to Ease Tensions

JAKARTA - US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israelis and Palestinians to defuse tensions during a visit to Jerusalem Monday, reaffirming the long-stalled vision of two-state peace as the only way forward.

Arriving amid the bloodiest violence in years, Foreign Minister Blinken focused his condemnation on Palestinian gunfire outside the synagogue that put Israel on high alert, but also warned of retaliation for such bloodshed.

Seven people were shot dead in Friday's attack by an East Jerusalem man who was also killed by police. The previous day, Israel carried out an unusually deep attack on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, killing 10 residents, most of them gunmen.

At least 35 Palestinians, including fighters and civilians, have been killed in the violence which has spiked since January 1, medical officials said.

"It is everyone's responsibility to take steps to defuse tensions rather than inflame them," Foreign Minister Blinken told reporters after landing in Tel Aviv.

The Friday rage, he said, "is more than an attack on the individual. It is also an attack on the universal act of practicing one's faith. We condemn it in the strongest terms."

"And we condemn all those who celebrate this and other acts of terrorism that took the lives of innocent people, no matter who the victims were or what they believed. Calls for revenge against more innocent victims are not the answer," he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Blinken met on Monday, has called on his citizens to carry arms as a precaution against such street attacks.

However, he also warned Israelis against vigilante violence.

After meeting PM Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Foreign Minister Blinken reiterated Washington's belief that a two-state solution is the only way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"As I said to the prime minister, anything that will distance us from that vision is, in our judgment, detrimental to Israel's long-term security and long-term identity as a Jewish and democratic state," Foreign Minister Blinken explained.

Recent data shows that public support for a two-state solution has reached a historic low.

According to a survey published last week by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research, 33 percent of Palestinians and 34 percent of Israeli Jews say they support it.

That's a significant drop from data compiled in 2020, in which two-thirds of Palestinians and 53 percent of Jewish Israelis said they opposed a two-state solution.

It is known that Netanyahu's new hardline government includes partners opposed to a Palestinian state, and control of the Palestinian territories is shared between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the diplomacy-minded Fatah group, and the Hamas group which has vowed to destroy Israel.

Meanwhile, Minister of Foreign Affairs Blinken is scheduled to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday.