US, Israel 'worlds apart': Blinken-Abbas meeting marks 'beginning of very long process'

US top diplomat Antony Blinken on Wednesday said Mahmud Abbas was committed to reforming the Palestinian Authority to potentially reunite war-torn Gaza and the occupied West Bank under its leadership. Blinken laid out Gaza's possible future after meeting Palestinian president Abbas in Ramallah and Bahrain's King Hamad in his fourth Middle East tour aimed at preventing the Israel-Hamas war from escalating. The bloodiest ever Gaza war has raged since the unprecedented Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7 and killed more than 23,000 people in the besieged Palestinian territory, according to its health ministry. Abbas raised with Blinken the need "to stop the Israeli aggression against Palestinian people" in Hamas-ruled Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where deadly unrest has also surged, said the official Palestinian news agency Wafa. Blinken told Abbas that Washington supports "tangible steps" towards the creation of a Palestinian state -- a long-term goal which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-right government has opposed. Blinken reiterated the US position that a Palestinian state must stand alongside Israel, "with both living in peace and security", said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. As Blinken seeks Palestinian governance reform for postwar Gaza, FRANCE 24's Tom Burges Watson is joined by Yossi Mekelberg, Associate Fellow of MENA Programme at Chatham House in London.