The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said on Monday from Riyadh that so far he has not seen any plan by Israel to guarantee the “effective” protection of civilians in the face of an invasion against the Palestinian town of Rafah, bordering Egypt.

“In the absence of a plan that guarantees that civilians will not suffer harm, we cannot support a large-scale military operation in Rafah and we have not yet seen a plan that gives us confidence that civilians can be effectively protected,” he said at the special session of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is held in Riyadh.

Israel’s potential offensive to Rafah, where about 1.4 million people displaced by the war live overcrowded, has become a red line for a large part of the international community, although this operation could be delayed in the event of a ceasefire.

The head of US diplomacy has traveled to Riyadh to coordinate with his colleagues from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), made up of six Arab countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, the positions regarding the efforts to reach a pause in Gaza, and participate in the World Economic Forum (WEF) held in the Saudi capital.

Before his speech at the Forum, Blinken addressed in a bilateral meeting with his Saudi counterpart, Faisal bin Farhan, efforts to reach a truce in Gaza and increase aid to civilians in the Palestinian enclave, Saudi sources reported.

At the meeting, Blinken and Bin Farhan “dealt with the situation in Gaza and other issues of common interest,” reported the official Saudi television channel Al Ejbaria, which disseminated images of the event.

Saudi television also broadcast images of the arrival of the heads of Foreign Affairs of the GCC at the meeting with Blinken, who landed on Monday in Riyadh on his seventh visit to the Middle East since the beginning of the war in Gaza, last October.

Along with the situation in Gaza, the US Secretary of State dealt with the heads of the diplomacies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman, the “threat from Iran” and the Shiite Houthi rebels of Yemen.

After his visit to Riyadh, he will move to Israel and Jordan and meet with humanitarian organizations.

The second official debate of Mexico’s presidential candidates focused on economic issues, so promises about salary and employment, as well as macroeconomic and public finance figures dominated the exchanges.

These are the main data that marked the meeting of the three presidential candidates, the ruling party Claudia Sheinbaum, and the opponents Xóchitl Gálvez and Jorge Álvarez Máynez:

Álvarez Máynez, of the opposition Movimiento Ciudadano (MC), promised to raise the minimum wage to 10,000 pesos per month (about 583 dollars), above the current 7,467 pesos (435.4 dollars), while Sheinbaum asserted that it will rise to an equivalent of 2.5 basic baskets.

“(There are) better salaries. Remember that they did not increase wages for 36 years in the country and for the first time (under the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador) they increased by 110%. We are going to take salaries to 2.5 basic baskets,” said the former head of Government of Mexico City (2018-2023).

Sheinbaum promised to build 100 new industrial parks to take advantage of the phenomenon of chain relocation or ‘nearshoring’.

“We are going to develop another 10 welfare poles throughout the country to take advantage of the relocation that is taking place at the moment. Among other things, we are going to make 100 industrial parks linked to regional vocations, with education and development for well-being,” he said.

Gálvez denounced that the growth of per capita debt is equivalent to 54% during López Obrador’s six-year term (2018-2024).

“Yes, they got the country into debt. Today, every Mexican owes 128,000 pesos (7,463.5 dollars). (That is) 45,000 pesos ($2,623.9) more than when they arrived. That’s why I tell them that (Sheinbaum) tells lies. That’s why she is the candidate of lies,” said the candidate of the Alliance Fuerza y Corazón por México.

The opposition candidate promised that “everyone who earns less than 15,000 pesos ($874.6) a month will not pay taxes,” which “benefits 20 million Mexicans.”

The candidate of Fuerza y Corazón por México assured that the López Obrador Administration has granted Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) a tax support of 2 billion pesos (116,618 million dollars), which is equivalent to building 8 million homes and giving 50,000 pesos ($2,915.5 dollars) to each of those people.

“Pemex is a robbed,” he said.

The ruling party candidate cited that the Government of López Obrador brought 5.1 million people out of poverty, based on the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval).

“For the first time since 1982 we are below 40% of the poor population, and at the same time inequality decreased,” Sheinbaum said. But Gálvez argued that there are still 47 million people in poverty.

Sheinbaum accused his main rival, Gálvez, of representing the “neoliberalism” of his parties, National Action (PAN), the Institutional Revolutionary (PRI) and the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

“At the time of (Felipe) Calderón (president from 2006 to 2012, the inequality between rich and poor of the PAN), reached 35 times. With the transformation, inequality has decreased to 17 times, that is, it is a different model, before it was supported by those at the top, now it supports those at the bottom,” he argued.

Álvarez Máynez stressed that Movimiento Ciudadano supports the reduction of the working day from 48 hours to 40 hours per week, in addition to accusing the parties of Gálvez and Sheinbaum of not supporting the proposal in Congress.

“She (Sheinbaum) is a candidate of the party that today has a majority in Congress. With your votes we could approve the decent workday with two days of rest a week, we could approve that this country has a universal minimum income,” he said.

The talks held between delegations from Egypt and Israel in Tel Aviv for a truce in Gaza were “largely positive and successful” and included “many of the demands” of the Islamist movement Hamas, an Egyptian security source familiar with the negotiations and another from Hamas reported to EFE on Sunday.

A delegation from Hamas, headed by the member of the political bureau Khalil al-The Hague, is expected to arrive tomorrow in Cairo, mediator in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group, to deliver its response to the mediators, according to the Egyptian source, which asked not to be identified by the sensitivity of this issue.

This new proposal, on whose content it did not provide details, “overcomes the obstacles that hinder” the declaration of a truce, a ceasefire, the exchange of prisoners and hostages, as well as the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip.

The possible announcement of a truce “will contribute to the approval of a first phase and to the efforts of the entire international community to consolidate this ceasefire and seek to move to a permanent truce instead of a temporary one,” according to the informant.

On the other hand, a source of the Palestinian Islamist movement, which also asked for anonymity, confirmed to EFE that tomorrow a delegation from Hamas will arrive in the Egyptian capital to present its response to the new Israeli proposal.