On Sunday Blinken visited Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to meet with President Mahmoud Abbas of the internationally backed Palestinian Authority (PA). Blinken reportedly told Abbas that the US is pressing Israel to "minimize civilian harm". He had some interesting ideas on how to do that.

Blinken had previously again met with Netanyahu Friday where according to fresh reports he pressed the Israeli prime minister to use "smaller bombs". 

"U.S. officials told the Israelis that they could reduce civilian casualties if they improved how they targeted Hamas leaders, gathered more intelligence on Hamas command and control networks before launching strikes, used smaller bombs to collapse the tunnel network and employed their ground forces to separate civilian population centers from where the militants are concentrated," The New York Times reported.

Blinken of course stressed Israel's "right to defend itself" but still pressed for a humanitarian "pause". In Ramallah, he vowed to Abbas that the US will step up humanitarian aid efforts to the besieged Gaza Strip.

According to the latest grim figures, some 1.5 million Gazans have now been internally displaced: 

The UN agency OCHA has said that of them, 710,275 are sheltering in 149 UNRWA facilities, 122,000 people are in hospitals, churches, and public buildings, 109,755 people are in 89 non-UNRWA schools, and the remainder are residing with host families.

Palestinian Authority leaders have charged that Israel is conducting "ethnic cleansing" - also by encouraging Palestinians to leave the entire northern half of the Strip while under bombardment.