Palestinian American leaders reject meeting with US Secretary of State Blinken

WASHINGTON (AA) – A group of Palestinian American community members rejected an invite from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to sit down for an off-the-record conversation Thursday due to what they said is the Biden administration’s complicity in the “genocide” in Gaza.

The majority of those who were invited to Thursday’s discussion declined, according to the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU).

IMEU said they declined the audience because it would have been “insulting and performative” amid the mounting death toll and widespread human suffering in the besieged coastal enclave.

“After nearly four unbearable months of constant US-enabled Israeli violence against our families, friends and other innocent civilians in Gaza, and throughout Palestine, we cannot imagine what Secretary Blinken could have to say or discuss with us,” IMEU said.

“President Biden could stop this horror with one phone call. Instead, this administration has bypassed Congress to rush more bombs to Israel to kill more Palestinian children, and on the very day the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide, cut funding to UNRWA, the largest humanitarian organization in Gaza, based on unproven allegations by Israel regarding 0.09% of UNRWA employees in Gaza,” IMEU added, referring to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

“They show us every day whose lives they value and whose lives they consider disposable. We will not be attending this discussion, which can only amount to a box-ticking exercise. Our families, our community and all Palestinians deserve better,” they added.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller confirmed the meeting with Palestinian American leaders took place Thursday, saying Blinken held it “because he thinks it’s important to hear directly from individuals, as I said, both inside the State Department and outside the State Department.”

“He finds that process to be constructive. It informs his thinking. It helps him, he believes, shape policy in the best way possible, and he’ll continue to hold such meetings,” Miller told reporters.

Biden, Blinken and other senior officials have faced continued protests that have at times transpired outside their personal residences and which have repeatedly disrupted the president’s nationwide campaign events.

Israel launched its war on Gaza on Oct. 7 following an attack by Palestinian resistance fighters. It has killed at least 27,019 Palestinians and injured 66,139. About 1,140 Israelis are believed to have died in the Hamas attack.