TEHRAN- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is touring the West Asia region for the 11th time since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza more than a year ago.

The top US diplomat’s regional trip comes as an Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign is unfolding in northern Gaza.  

Israel launched a brutal offensive in northern Gaza nearly 20 days ago killing more than 600 people in areas such Beit Lahiya and Jabalia. 

Relentless Israeli attacks have turned the vast majority of residential buildings and civil infrastructure in the north of the Palestinian territory into ruins. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem (al-Quds) on Tuesday.Israel has ordered families in Beit Lahiya and Jabalia to flee by taking certain roads leading to the checkpoints set up by its army. 

Israel has slaughtered more than 42,700 Palestinians since launching war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.  According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, the number of Palestinians wounded in Israeli military attacks has also surpassed 100,000.

Since the start of the onslaught, Israel has been accused of starving Palestinians by largely restricting the entry of essentials such as food. The regime is currently using starvation as a weapon in northern Gaza while forcibly displacing the local population. 

The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has pained a gloomy picture of the situation of Palestinians in northern Gaza.

“The smell of death is everywhere as bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble. Missions to clear the bodies or provide humanitarian assistance are denied,” Philippe Lazzarini said on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

The UNRWA chief called for an “immediate truce, even if only for a few hours”, to allow safe passage for families seeking refuge.

In the early weeks after the beginning of the Gaza onslaught, Israel lobbied Egypt and the European Union for a plan to drive Palestinians “out of Gaza”.

Israel acknowledged at that time that its Intelligence Ministry had drafted "a wartime proposal" to transfer the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Israel has slaughtered more than 42,7000 Palestinians in Gaza and injured over 100,000 others since October last year. The move was quickly dismissed by the Egyptian president. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Egyptians in their millions would reject the forced displacement of Palestinians into Sinai.

The latest comments made by an Israeli far-right minister are reminiscent of the apartheid-style proposal. 

This week, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir urged Palestinians to “voluntarily” leave the Gaza Strip.

“We will encourage voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens. We will offer them the opportunity to move to other countries because that land belongs to us,” Ben-Gvir said. 

Israel withdrew its military and settlers from Gaza in 2005 after a nearly 40-year occupation. But Israel is preparing to rebuild settlements in northern Gaza after expelling Palestinians from the area. 

Concurrently with the war of genocide in Gaza, Israel is also massacring Lebanese people. 

Israel has killed more than 2,400 people in Lebanon since October last year, including 1,800 in the past weeks in the wake of its recent massive bombing campaign and acts of sabotage in the country.  

Israel is forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from northern Gaza. The Israeli carnage in Gaza and Lebanon has drawn global outrage leading to growing pressure on the United States which is the Tel Aviv regime’s main arms supplier and staunch ally. 

To alleviate the pressure precisely two weeks prior to the US elections, Blinken has been dispatched to the region.

Blinken is seeking to divert global attention away from Israel’s ethnic cleansing plan in northern Gaza and its savage attacks on Lebanon. 

The White House claims that the top American diplomat is actively working to avert a full-scale war in the region by seeking a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing conflict in Gaza. 

But his regional visit is just a smokescreen for Israel to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza and press ahead with its military adventurism in Lebanon and beyond.