CAIRO (Dispatches) – United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Egypt on the second day of a regional tour to allegedly bolster a ceasefire reached last week between the Zionist regime and Hamas resistance movement.
Eleven days of Zionist regime bombardment that began on May 10 killed at least 253 Palestinians, including 66 children, and wounded nearly 2,000 others in the coastal enclave. At least 12 people in the occupied territories were killed by retaliatory rockets fired by Hamas and other resistance groups from Gaza during the same period.
Apparently caught off guard by unprecedented rocket barrages from Gaza, the Zionist regime announced a unilateral ceasefire on May 21, which Palestinian resistance groups accepted with Egyptian mediation.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 253 Palestinians were killed in the regime’s offensive, including 66 children and 39 women, and 1948 others were wounded.
Blinken’s visit to Cairo on Wednesday came a day after he held separate meetings with Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.
During the meeting with Blinken, Abbas said the reinforcement of the Gaza truce paves the way for the prompt start of a political process that ends the Zionist regime’s occupation of Palestine.
Palestinian protesters took to the streets of Ramallah to protest the visit by Blinken to the West Bank city and his meeting with Abbas.
The demonstration, which was organized by the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces, took place on Tuesday.
Before being met with police, the participants marched in Ramallah, chanting slogans such as “America is the head of the snake,” “Security coordination is shameful,” and “The Oslo Accords are gone.”
Some protesters carried placards reading, “Blinken, you are not welcome!” “Stop funding Israeli terrorism,” “No justice, No Peace, U.S. out of Middle East” and “Palestinian lives matter.”
They also carried mock coffins of children who lost their lives during the recent onslaught by the Zionist regime on the blockaded Gaza Strip.