RAMALLAH, West Bank — America’s top diplomat came to the seat of the Palestinian government Tuesday with promises of additional aid, a reopened consulate in Jerusalem and a broad sympathetic pledge to rebuild ties that had been severed by the previous administration in favour of Israel.

With the raw emotion of deaths and wreckage from an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas militants still fresh in the minds of both Israelis and Palestinians, the actions by Secretary of State Antony Blinken represented, in tone at least, an attempted revival of America’s former role as a more neutral mediator in the Middle East’s most protracted conflict.

It amounted to a sharp turnabout from the policies of former President Donald Trump, who had made no secret of siding with Israel by closing a political channel with the Palestinian Authority and cutting off humanitarian assistance to millions of Palestinians.

But it also carries big risks. The Biden administration says it will help finance an enormous reconstruction effort in the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by Hamas, a militant group considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Israel and many other countries.

Rebuilding ties with the Palestinians also risks angering Israel, the most reliable U.S. ally in the Middle East, whose leaders are already anxious about the Biden administration’s attempts to re-join a nuclear agreement with Iran. Israel has long opposed and worked to undermine a deal.

At nearly every stop on a daylong series of meetings in Jerusalem and Ramallah, Blinken emphasized the tragic deaths of civilians — including children — in the cross-border hostilities between Hamas and Israel that ended in a fragile cease-fire late last week.

“The aspirations of the Palestinian people are like those of people everywhere,” Blinken said after meeting the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, at his presidential office in the occupied West Bank. The United States is committed, he said, “to working with the Palestinian people to realize these aspirations.”