Tel Aviv/Ramallah, 5 November 2023 (dpa/MIA) – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Sunday in Blinken's first trip to the West Bank since the current Israel-Gaza war erupted, the Times of Israel reported.

The newspaper cited an unnamed Palestinian official as its source. According to the report, Blinken will raise the future of the Gaza Strip once the war is over.

The US secretary of state landed in Tel Aviv on Sunday morning.

The newspaper noted that earlier this week Blinken had told a congressional hearing that "at some point what would make the most sense would be for an effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza."

Abbas has made clear that this could only happen under a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict.

This has in turn been rejected by most of the current Israeli cabinet as a threat to the Jewish state. Hard-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet have called for the entire West Bank, and even for the Gaza Strip, to be annexed.

Palestinian extremist organization Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, forcing out Abbas' Fatah movement, which retains control over Palestinian areas in the West Bank.

Following a meeting with Blinken in Amman on Saturday, Arab states and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), an umbrella grouping and the self-styled representative body of all Palestinians, whether in Palestinian territories or outside, called for an "immediate and comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza without conditions" to provide humanitarian assistance to the people trapped there.

The United States is pushing rather for a temporary halt to the fighting, while rejecting a comprehensive ceasefire, charging that this would lead to Hamas retaining power and being able to repeat the October 7 massacre.