The war has come as the three Arab countries face a struggle with fiscal pressures, slow growth and steep unemployment, and it has deterred much-needed investment as well as hitting consumption and trade. Lebanon is in a deep economic crisis.

The study, commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme, said the cost of the conflict for the three states in terms of loss of GDP may amount to $10.3 billion or 2.3%, and could double if it lasts another six months.

“This is a massive impact,” Abdallah Al Dardari, U.N. assistant secretary-general and UNDP’s Director of the Regional Bureau for Arab States (RBAS) who lead the study told Reuters.

“The crisis was a bomb in an already fragile regional situation… It soured sentiment with fear of what could happen and where things are going,” he said.

Israel launched its campaign to annihilate the Hamas militant group that controls Gaza after fighters stormed across the border on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and seizing 240 hostages, according to Israel.

Since then, Israeli forces have besieged the enclave and laid much of it to waste, with more than 18,000 people confirmed killed, according to Palestinian health authorities, and many thousands feared lost in the rubble or beyond the reach of ambulances.

Dardari said the scale of destruction in Gaza within such a brief time was unprecedented since World War Two.

“To lose 45-50% of all housing in one month of fighting … We have never seen anything like this … the relationship between destruction level and time, it’s unique,” Al Dardari said.

The mass displacement of almost 80% of Gaza’s population within such a short period eclipsed the more than decade-old Syrian conflict, which sparked the world’s biggest refugee crisis.

“It took Syria five years of fighting to reach the same level of destruction that Gaza reached in one month,” said Dardari, a former minister for economic affairs in the Syrian government.

Dardari, an expert on reconstruction in conflict zones, said his team was already reaching out to development funds and multilateral financial institutions on post-war reconstruction scenarios for Gaza.

“We are not waiting until the battles end… this effort has begun,” Dardari said, without elaborating.

OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais in a letter dated Dec. 6 and seen by Reuters urged OPEC members to reject any COP28 deal which targets fossil fuels rather than emissions.

Ministers from Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria and Oman arrived for the energy meeting, as well as Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman who had been in Dubai for the U.N climate summit.

United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail Mohamed Al Mazrouei was absent.

Saudi Arabia, the de-facto leader of OPEC, and top ally Russia are among several countries insisting that the COP28 conference in Dubai focus only on reducing climate pollution – and not on targeting the fossil fuels causing it, according to observers in the negotiations.

Yet at least 80 countries including the United States, the European Union and many poor, climate-vulnerable nations are demanding that a COP28 deal call clearly for an eventual end to fossil fuel use.

When asked about Kuwait’s position on the climate talks, Oil Minister Saad Al Barrak told reporters it was not established yet.

Deals at U.N. climate summits must be passed by consensus among the nearly 200 countries present. The summits aim to establish a consensus on the world’s next steps to address climate change – though it is up to individual countries to ensure it happens through their national policies and investments.

For oil-rich countries, a deal to ditch fossil fuels – even without a firm end date – would signal a political willingness from other nations to slash their use.

COP28 is scheduled to end on 12 December, as is the two-day 12th Arab Energy Conference.

According to three regional sources, Israel related its plans to its neighbours Egypt and Jordan, along with the United Arab Emirates, which normalised ties with Israel in 2020.

They also said that Saudi Arabia, which does not have ties with Israel and which halted a U.S.-mediated normalisation process after the Gaza war flared on Oct. 7, had been informed. The sources did not say how the information reached Riyadh, which officially does not have direct communication channels with Israel. Non-Arab Turkey was also told, the sources said.

The initiative does not indicate an imminent end to Israel’s offensive – which resumed on Friday after a seven-day truce – but it shows Israel is reaching out beyond established Arab mediators, such as Egypt or Qatar, as it seeks to shape a post-war Gaza.

No Arab states have shown any willingness to police or administer Gaza in future and most have roundly condemned Israel’s offensive that has killed more than 15,000 people and levelled swathes of Gaza’s urban areas. Hamas killed 1,200 people in its Oct. 7 raid and took more than 200 hostages.

“Israel wants this buffer zone between Gaza and Israel from the north to the south to prevent any Hamas or other militants from infiltrating or attacking Israel,” said a senior regional security official, one of the three regional sources who asked not to be identified by nationality.

The Egyptian, Saudi, Qatari and Turkish governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Jordanian officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

A UAE official did not respond directly when asked if Abu Dhabi had been told about the buffer zone, but said: “The UAE will support any future post-war arrangements agreed upon by all the concerned parties” to achieve stability and a Palestinian state.

Asked about plans for a buffer zone, Ophir Falk, foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Reuters: “The plan is more detailed than that. It’s based on a three-tier process for the day after Hamas.”

Outlining the Israeli government’s position, he said the three tiers involved destroying Hamas, demilitarising Gaza and de-radicalising the enclave.

“A buffer zone may be part of the demilitarisation process,” he said. He declined to offer details when asked whether those plans had been raised with international partners, including

Arab states.

Arab states have dismissed as impossible Israel’s goal of wiping out Hamas, saying it was more than simply a militant force that could be defeated.

Squeezing Palestinians

Israel has suggested in the past it was considering a buffer zone inside Gaza, but the sources said it was now presenting them to Arab states as part of its future security plans for Gaza. Israeli troops withdrew from the enclave in 2005.

A U.S. official, who declined to be identified, said Israel had “floated” the buffer zone idea without saying to whom. But the official also repeated Washington’s opposition to any plan that reduced the size of Palestinian territory.

Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states have voiced fears that Israel wants to squeeze Palestinians out of Gaza, repeating the dispossession of land Palestinians suffered when Israel was created in 1948. The Israeli government denies any such aim.

A senior Israeli security source said the buffer zone idea was “being examined”, adding: “It is not clear at the moment how deep this will be and whether it could be 1 km or 2 km or hundreds of metres (inside Gaza).”

Any encroachment into Gaza, which is about 40 km (25 miles) long and between about 5 km (3 miles) and 12 km (7.5 miles) wide, would cram its 2.3 million people into an even smaller area.

In Washington, an Israeli official said the Israeli defense establishment was talking about “some kind of security buffer on the Gaza side of the border so that Hamas cannot gather military capabilities close to the border and surprise Israel again.”

“It is a security measure, not a political one,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “We do not intend to remain on the Gaza side of the border.”

Till now, Egypt, the first Arab state to sign a peace deal with Israel, and Qatar, which does not have formal ties but keeps communication channels open, have been at the centre of mediation talks with Israel that have focused on exchanging hostages held by Hamas for Palestinians in Israeli jails.

Shifting Focus

Two Egyptian security sources said Israel had raised the idea in mediation talks with Egypt and Qatar of disarming northern Gaza and setting up a buffer zone in north Gaza with international supervision.

The sources said several Arab states opposed this. While Arab states might not oppose a security barrier between the two sides, there was disagreement over where it was located, they added.

The Egyptian sources said Israel had said in a meeting in Cairo in November that the Hamas leaders should be tried internationally in return for a full ceasefire. Mediators said the issue should be postponed until after the war to avoid derailing talks about hostage releases, the sources said.

A source in the Israeli prime minister’s office declined to address the reports, adding: “Netanyahu’s War Cabinet has defined the war missions: destroy Hamas and bring all the hostages back home, and we will continue until we complete our missions.”

One of the Egyptian sources said Israel, in its discussions with Egypt and Qatar, had shifted from a focus on retaliation earlier in the crisis towards showing a greater willingness to “rethink its demands as mediation continued.”

The regional sources compared the Gaza buffer zone plan to the “security zone” Israel once had in south Lebanon. Israel evacuated that zone, which was about 15 km (10 miles) deep, in 2000 after years of fighting and attacks by Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

They also said Israel’s plan for post-war Gaza included deporting leaders of Hamas, an action that would also mirror the Israeli campaign in Lebanon in the 1980s when it drove out the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had launched attacks from Lebanon into Israel.

“Israel is ready to pay a costly price to expel and evict Hamas completely from Gaza to other countries in the region similar to what it did in Lebanon, but it’s not the same. Getting rid of Hamas is difficult and not certain,” said another of the regional officials familiar with the discussions.

A senior Israeli official said Israel did not consider Hamas to be like the PLO nor believe that it would act like the PLO.

Mohammad Dahlan, Gaza’s former security chief from the Palestinian Fatah faction which was ejected from the enclave when Hamas took control in 2007, said Israel’s buffer zone plan was unrealistic and would not protect Israeli forces.

“The buffer zone could make (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s forces a target also in the zone,” he said.

An employee at McDonald’s corporate offices in Egypt who asked not to be named said the Egyptian franchise’s October and November sales fell by at least 70% compared to the same months last year.

Midway through a recent evening in Cairo, a worker cleaned tables in an empty McDonald’s restaurant. Branches of other Western fast-food chains in the Egyptian capital also appeared deserted.

All have been hit by a boycott campaign over Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip since the deadly Hamas attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

Western brands are feeling the impact in Egypt and Jordan, and there are signs the campaign is spreading in some other Arab countries including Kuwait and Morocco.

Some of companies the campaign is directed at are perceived to have taken pro-Israeli stances, and some are alleged to have financial ties to Israel or investments there.

As the campaign has started to spread, boycott calls circulated on social media have expanded to list dozens of companies and products, prompting shoppers to shift to local alternatives.

In Egypt, where there is little chance of people taking to the streets because of security restrictions, some see the boycott as the best or only way to make their voices heard.

“I feel that even if I know this will not have a massive impact on the war, then this is the least we can do as citizens of different nations so we don’t feel like our hands are covered in blood,” said 31-year-old Cairo resident Reham Hamed, who is boycotting U.S. fast food chains and some cleaning products.

In Jordan, pro-boycott residents sometimes enter McDonald’s and Starbucks branches to encourage scarce customers to take their business elsewhere. Videos have circulated of what appear to be Israeli troops washing clothes with well-known detergent brands which viewers are urged to boycott.

“No one is buying these products,” said Ahmad al-Zaro, a cashier at a large supermarket in the capital Amman where customers were choosing local brands instead.

In Kuwait City on Tuesday evening, a tour of seven branches of Starbucks, McDonald’s and KFC found them nearly empty. A worker at one Starbucks, who declined to be identified, said other U.S. brands had also been affected.

In Rabat, the capital of Morocco, a worker at a Starbucks branch said the number of customers had dropped off significantly this week. The worker and the company gave no figures.

McDonald’s Corp said in a statement last month that it was “dismayed” by disinformation regarding its position on the conflict and that its doors were open to all. Its Egyptian franchise has underlined its Egyptian ownership and pledged 20 million Egyptian pounds ($650,000) in aid to Gaza.

Starbucks did not respond to a request for comment on the campaign. In a statement on its website updated in October, it said it was a non-political organisation and dismissed rumours that it had provided support to the Israeli government or army.

Other Western companies did not immediately respond to requests by Reuters for comment.

‘Unprecedented Reaction’

The boycott campaigns have spread in countries where pro-Palestinian sentiment has traditionally been strong. Egypt and Jordan made peace with Israel decades ago, but those deals did not lead to a popular rapprochement.

The protests also reflect a groundswell of anger over an Israeli military operation that is more destructive than previous offensives, causing a humanitarian crisis and killing 13,300 civilians, according to authorities in Hamas-run Gaza.

Israel said about 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, and that about 240 were taken hostage.

Previous boycott campaigns in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation, had less impact, including those advocated by the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

“The scale of the aggression against the Gaza strip is unprecedented. Therefore, the reaction, whether on the Arab street or even internationally, is unprecedented,” said Hossam Mahmoud, a member of BDS Egypt.

Some campaigners have singled out Starbucks for suing its workers’ union over a post on the Israel-Hamas conflict, and McDonald’s after its Israeli franchise said it gave free meals to Israeli military personnel.

An employee at McDonald’s corporate offices in Egypt who asked not to be named said the Egyptian franchise’s October and November sales fell by at least 70% compared to the same months last year.

“We are struggling to cover our own expenses during this time,” the employee said. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the figures the employee provided.

Sameh El Sadat, an Egyptian politician and co-founder of TBS Holding, a supplier to Starbucks and McDonald’s, said he had noticed a drop or slowdown of about 50% in demand from his clients.

Uneven Take-Up

Despite efforts by targeted brands to defend themselves and retain business with special offers, boycott campaigns have continued catching on, in some cases outside the Arab world.

In Muslim-majority Malaysia, a worker at a McDonald’s in Putrajaya, Malaysia’s administrative capital, said the branch was seeing about 20% fewer customers, a figure that Reuters was not immediately able to verify.

Ride-hailing app Grab also faced calls for a boycott in Malaysia after the chief executive’s wife said she had fallen “completely in love” with Israel during visits there.

She later said the posts were taken out of context. The Malaysian arms of Grab and McDonald’s said following the boycott calls that they would donate aid for Palestinians.

Earlier this month, Turkey’s parliament removed Coca-Cola and Nestle products from its restaurants, with a parliamentary source citing a “public outcry” against the brands although no big Turkish company or state agency has cut ties with Israel.

Take-up of boycotts has been uneven, with no major impact seen in some countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia. Even where boycotts have a wider following, some people are sceptical they can have much effect.

“If we really want to boycott and support these people (Palestinians), we take arms and fight with them…Otherwise, no,” said Cairo kiosk owner Issam Abu Shalaby.

The delegation, which is set to meet officials representing each of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, is also piling pressure on the West to reject Israel’s justification of its actions against Palestinians as self-defence.

The officials holding meetings with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi on Monday are from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia, Palestine and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, among others.

“We are here to send a clear signal: that is we must immediately stop the fighting and the killings, we must immediately deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza,” said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.

The extraordinary joint Islamic-Arab summit in Riyadh this month also urged the International Criminal Court to investigate “war crimes and crimes against humanity that Israel is committing” in the Palestinian territories.

Saudi Arabia has sought to press the United States and Israel for an end to hostilities in Gaza, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, gathered Arab and Muslim leaders to reinforce that message.

About 240 hostages were taken during Hamas’s deadly cross-border rampage into Israel on Oct. 7, which prompted Israel to invade the Gaza Strip with the intention of eradicating the Islamist militant group.

Gaza’s Hamas-run government said at least 13,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombardments since then, including at least 5,500 children.

Israeli ambassador to Beijing Irit Ben-Abba told foreign reporters at a briefing on Monday that she hoped there would not be “any statements from this visit about a ceasefire, now is not the time.”

She said that Israel hoped that the delegation would talk about hostages captured by Hamas “and call for their immediate release without preconditions,” adding that the parties involved should talk together about Egypt’s “role in facilitating humanitarian assistance.”

‘Brother And Friend’

China’s Wang said Beijing was a “good friend and brother of Arab and Muslim countries,” adding it has “always firmly supported the just cause of the Palestinian people to restore their legitimate national rights and interests.”

Since the start of hostilities, China’s foreign ministry has repeatedly stopped short of condemning Hamas, instead calling for de-escalation and for Israel and Palestine to pursue a “two-state solution” for an independent Palestine.

Since the end of China’s nearly three years of COVID lockdowns, Xi has launched a diplomatic push aimed at countering the United States and its allies, who he says seek to contain and suppress his country.

Beijing has deepened alliances with non-Western led multilateral groups such as the BRICS bloc of nations while strengthening ties with countries in the Middle East and the Global South.

On Monday, Wang added China will work to “quell the fighting in Gaza as soon as possible, alleviate the humanitarian crisis and promote an early, comprehensive, just and lasting settlement of the Palestinian issue.”

China’s special envoy on the Middle East, Zhai Jun, has engaged officials from Israel and the Palestinian Authority – which governs in the occupied West Bank – as well as the Arab League and EU in the last year to discuss a two-state solution and recognition for Palestine at the United Nations.

The RIA report, citing a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, did not specify which countries would be attending the meeting in Moscow. No further details were immediately available.

Russia, which previously enjoyed close relations with Israel, has struck a cautiously pro-Palestinian position since the outbreak of war around Gaza, rebuking Israel for civilian casualties, and restating its long-standing support for a Palestinian state.

Asked if they feel part of the country, 70% of Arab citizens polled said “yes”, up from 48% in June, the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) said, describing it as the highest finding for the sector since it began such surveys 20 years ago.

However, just 27% of Arab respondents said they felt optimistic about Israel’s future, compared to 72% of Jews.

Among Israel’s Jewish majority, 94% feel part of the country, the IDI said, a peak last matched in 2003, when the country was at the height of military operation against Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.

Israel went to war in Gaza following an Oct 7 cross-border onslaught by Hamas gunmen in which some 1,400 of its civilians and soldiers were killed, among them Arab citizens. More than 10,000 Palestinian in Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces since.

The Arab minority, who are predominantly Muslim, are descended from Palestinian Arabs who remained in Israel when it was founded in the 1948 war in what had been British-ruled Palestine. Hundreds of thousands of their kinsmen fled or were expelled.

Asked if, given an alternative Western citizenship, they would leave Israel, 80.5% of Jewish respondents said they would stay, as did 59% of Arab respondents, the IDI poll found.

Israel’s far-right minister for police has warned that internal Arab unrest could be sparked as it was during a previous Gaza war in 2021. But this has not been borne out.

Police have carried out arrests among Arab citizens accused of social media posts inciting pro-Palestinian violence, and on Thursday arrested five leaders of the Arab community who had planned to organise an anti-war protest.

Lawyers for those arrested called the moves undemocratic.

The IDI is a non-partisan think tank. Its poll was conducted on November 5-6, had a representative sample of 502 respondents and a margin of error of 4.04%.

“We will see, this week, in the next few days Saudi Arabia convening an emergency Arab summit in Riyadh,” said Saudi investment minister Khalid Al-Falih, at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore.

“In a few days you will see Saudi Arabia convening an Islamic summit,” he said.

“In the short term, the objective of bringing these three summits and other gatherings under the leadership of Saudi Arabia would be to drive towards peaceful resolution of the conflict.”

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi will travel to Saudi Arabia on Sunday for the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation summit, Etemadonline news reported, the first visit by an Iranian head of state since Tehran and Riyadh ended years of hostility under a China-brokered deal in March.

Falih also said Saudi Arabia would convene a summit with African nations, without specifying a date. Late on Tuesday Saudi Arabia’s foreign affairs ministry had issued a statement saying that meeting, which had been set for the weekend, would be postponed in order to focus on the other two summits.

In a rare public disagreement at a news conference in Amman, foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt, standing alongside Blinken, repeatedly pushed for a cessation of hostilities, saying the death of thousands of civilians could not be justified as self-defense.

They also refused to discuss in-depth what comes next for Gaza, when and if Hamas is eradicated, saying the immediate focus should be on the effort to establish a cessation of hostilities.

Blinken is on his second trip to the region since Israel and Hamas went to war on Oct. 7, when the Islamist militant Palestinian group raided Israel from Gaza, in a rampage Israel says killed 1,400 people, with more than 240 others taken hostage.

Health officials in Hamas-run Gaza say more than 9,250 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since then. The Israeli army has struck Gaza from the air, imposed a siege and launched a ground assault, stirring global alarm at humanitarian conditions in the enclave. Food is scarce and medical services are collapsing.

The growing number of civilian deaths in Gaza has intensified international calls for a ceasefire but Washington, like Israel, has so far dismissed them, even though it has sought to persuade Israel to accept localized pauses – an idea rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he met Blinken on Friday.

“A ceasefire now would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7,” Blinken said. “No nation, none of us would accept that … So it is important to reaffirm Israel’s right and its obligation to defend itself.”

Blinken earlier met with Saudi, Qatari, Emirati, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers as well as Palestinian representatives in Amman. The Jordanian Foreign Ministry said the meeting would emphasize the Arab stance calling for an immediate ceasefire, delivering humanitarian aid and ways of ending “the dangerous deterioration that threatens the security of the region.”

“The international community’s responsibility always is to seek the cessation of hostilities, not promote the continuance of violence,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said at the same press conference.

“I think we need to get our priorities straight,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said. “Right now we have to make sure that this war stops,” he added.

Washington has been speaking with Israel, Arab states and international organizations on the future of Gaza but both Shoukry and Safadi appeared reluctant to discuss openly those conversations to ensure the focus remains on the need for a ceasefire.

“What happens next – how can we even entertain what will happen in Gaza when we do not know what kind of Gaza will be left,” after this war, Safadi said.

Arab states are also concerned by the risk of the conflict spreading into the region. Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraqi Shi’ite militias backed by Iran have both launched attacks on Israel since Oct. 7, while Tehran-backed Iraqi Shi’ite militias have been firing on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, stressed the urgent need for a ceasefire in Gaza during a meeting with Blinken in Jordan on Saturday, Mikati’s office said. Mikati also said “Israeli aggression” in southern Lebanon must stop.

Humanitarian Pauses

After his meeting with Blinken on Friday in Israel, Netanyahu said Israel refused a temporary ceasefire that did not include the release of hostages.

A senior State Department official said Blinken’s talks with Netanyahu and his war cabinet about humanitarian pauses on Friday mirrored an earlier push last month for access for humanitarian goods into Gaza.

In that case, Israel initially refused but eventually relented, and more than 100 aid trucks per day are now crossing into the strip, the official said. U.S. officials say 500-600 trucks per day are needed to meet the need in Gaza.

Now the U.S. is asking Israel to agree to temporary and location-specific pauses in its attacks to allow aid to be distributed inside Gaza, but Israel is concerned Hamas will use agreed pauses to regroup and resupply.

U.S. special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues David Satterfield told reporters travelling with Blinken that Israel’s concerns were understandable, but that assurances that Israel will not target specific places or routes were a “strategic imperative” to get aid to those who need it.

The United States has dismissed growing international calls for a ceasefire but has sought to persuade Israel to accept localized pauses – an idea rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he met Blinken on Friday.

Blinken is on his second trip to the region since Israel and Hamas went to war on Oct. 7, when the Islamist militant Palestinian group raided Israel from Gaza, in a rampage Israel says killed 1,400 people, with more than 240 others taken hostage.

Health officials in Hamas-run Gaza say more than 9,250 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since then. The Israeli army has struck Gaza from the air, imposed a siege and launched a ground assault, stirring global alarm at humanitarian conditions in the enclave. Food is scarce and medical services are collapsing.

Blinken is in Amman for meetings with Arab officials after visiting Tel Aviv on Friday.

He will also visit Turkey for talks with officials on Monday, where he will discuss the Gaza crisis as well as Sweden’s bid to join NATO, spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

Saudi, Qatari, Emirati, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers as well as Palestinian representatives will stress the “Arab stance calling for an immediate ceasefire, delivering humanitarian aid and ways of ending the dangerous deterioration that threatens the security of the region”, the Jordanian foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.

After meeting Blinken on Friday, Netanyahu said Israel refused a temporary ceasefire that did not include the release of hostages.

A senior State Department official said Blinken’s talks with Netanyahu and his war cabinet about humanitarian pauses on Friday mirrored an earlier push last month for access for humanitarian goods into Gaza.

In that case, Israel initially refused but eventually relented, and more than 100 aid trucks per day are now crossing into the strip, the official said. US officials say 500-600 trucks per day are needed to meet the need in Gaza.

Now the U.S. is asking Israel to agree to temporary and location-specific pauses in its attacks to allow aid to be distributed inside Gaza, but Israel is concerned Hamas will use agreed pauses to regroup and resupply.

U.S. special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues David Satterfield told reporters travelling with Blinken that Israel’s concerns were understandable, but that assurances that Israel will not target specific places or routes were a “strategic imperative” to get aid to those who need it.

Such assurances could mean “resumption of provision of basic services: bakeries, getting the de-sal(ination) plants continuously operating,” Satterfield said.

“We want to see the ability to have secure, sustained movement of humanitarian assistance, not just across the Rafah corridor, but into points of needs in the south,” he said, adding that between 800,000 and 1 million people had already moved from the north to the south.

King Abdullah of Jordan, a staunch U.S. ally, told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a phone call on Friday the international community urgently needed to push for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Arab states are concerned by the risk of the conflict spreading into the region. Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraqi Shi’ite militias backed by Iran have both launched attacks on Israel since Oct. 7, while Tehran-backed Iraqi Shi’ite militias have been firing on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati stressed the urgent need for a ceasefire in Gaza during a meeting with Blinken in Jordan on Saturday, Mikati’s office said.

Mikati also said “Israeli aggression” in southern Lebanon must stop.

Miller in a separate statement said Blinken had “shared his deep concern about exchanges of fire along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel and stressed the importance of ensuring the Israel-Hamas conflict does not spread elsewhere”.