Secretary of State Antony Blinken will arrive in Israel this week in a show of solidarity and support, the State Department said, as Israel prepares for its offensive on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The Israel Defense Forces are massing troops in the area around Gaza, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an IDF spokesman, said early Wednesday local time. He added that the barrier on the border has been rebuilt. Israel has summoned 360,000 reservists in the largest mobilization since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The first plane carrying U.S. ammunition has landed in Israel, while the arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean Sea is a “message of deterrence to other states or non-state actors that might seek to widen this war,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday. Earlier in the day, President Biden called Hamas’s attack on Israel “sheer evil” in a speech that Hamas denounced as “inflammatory.”