WILMINGTON, Del. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday delivered some of the Biden administration’s strongest public criticism yet of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza, saying Israeli tactics had meant “a horrific loss of innocent civilian lives” but not managed to neutralize Hamas leaders and fighters and could lead to a long-lasting insurgency.
In a pair of television interviews, Blinken stressed that the United States believes Israeli forces should “get out of Gaza,” but is also waiting to see credible plans from Israel for security and governance in the territory after the war.
Hamas has re-emerged in parts of Gaza, Blinken said, and that the “heavy action” by Israeli forces in the southern city of Rafah risks leaving the US’ closest ally in the Middle East “holding control of an insurgency.” lasting”.
He said the United States has been working with Arab countries and others for weeks on developing “credible plans for security, for governance, for reconstruction” in Gaza, but “we have not seen that coming from Israel. … We need to look at that too.”
Blinken also said that as Israel moves deeper into Rafah in the south, where Israel says Hamas has four battalions and where more than 1 million civilians have gathered, a military operation could “have some initial success” but run the risk of “terrible harm” to the population. without solving a problem “that we both want to solve, which is to ensure that Hamas cannot return to governing Gaza”.
Israel’s conduct of the war, he said, put the country “on the trajectory, potentially, of inheriting an insurgency with many armed Hamas members remaining or, if it emerges, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably replenished by Hamas.” . . We’ve been talking to them about a much better way to get a lasting result, lasting security.”
Blinken also publicly repeated for the first time by a US official the conclusions of a new Biden administration report to Congress on Friday, which said Israel’s use of US-supplied weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law. The report also said that wartime conditions prevented American officials from determining this with certainty in specific airstrikes.
“When it comes to the use of weapons, concerns about incidents were given the totality of harm caused to children, women, men, it was reasonable to assess that in certain cases Israel acted in ways that are not consistent with international humanitarian law ,” Blinken said. He cited “the horrific loss of innocent civilian lives.”
Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, in a call Sunday with his Israeli counterpart, Tzachi Hanegbi, raised concerns about a ground military operation in Rafah and discussed “alternative courses of action” that would ensure Hamas’s defeat “at all costs.” the Gaza sites,” according to a White House summary of the conversation, Hanegbi “confirmed that Israel is taking U.S. concerns into consideration,” the White House said.
The war began on October 7 after a Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians. Around 250 people were taken hostage. Israel’s offensive killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
U.S. and U.N. officials say Israeli restrictions on food shipments since Oct. 7 have triggered starvation in northern Gaza.
Tensions between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how the war, as well as internal tensions over US support for Israel, with protests on US college campuses and many Republican lawmakers saying Biden needs to give Israel everything he wants it needs. The issue could play an important role in the outcome of November’s presidential elections.
Biden said in an interview last week with CNN that his administration would not provide weapons that Israel could use for an all-out attack on Rafah.
Blinken has appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
