Blinken delivers strong public criticism of Israel’s invasion of Gaza

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken has delivered some of the Biden administration’s strongest public criticism yet of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, saying Israeli tactics have meant “a horrible loss of life of innocent civilians” but failed to neutralise Hamas leaders and fighters and could drive a lasting insurgency.

In a pair of TV interviews, Blinken underscored that the United States believes Israeli forces should “get out of Gaza,” but also is waiting to see credible plans from Israel for security and governance in the territory after the war.

Hamas has reemerged in parts of Gaza, Blinken said, and that “heavy action” by Israeli forces in the southern city of Rafah risks leaving America’s closest Mideast ally “holding the bag on an enduring insurgency.”

He said the United States has worked with Arab countries and others for weeks on developing “credible plans for security, for governance, for rebuilding” in Gaza, but “we haven’t seen that come from Israel. ... We need to see that, too.”

Blinken also said that as Israel pushes deeper in Rafah in the south, where Israel says Hamas has four battalions and where more than one million civilians have massed, a military operation may “have some initial success” but risks “terrible harm” to the population without solving a problem “that both of us want to solve, which is making sure Hamas cannot again govern Gaza.”

Israel’s conduct of the war, he said, has put the country “on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy, and probably refilled by Hamas. We’ve been talking to them about a much better way of getting an enduring result, enduring security.”

Blinken also echoed for the first time publicly by a US official the findings of a new Biden administration report to Congress on Friday that said Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law. The report also said wartime conditions prevented American officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes.

“When it comes to the use of weapons, concerns about incidents where given the totality of the damage that’s been done to children, women, men, it was reasonable to assess that, in certain instances, Israel acted in ways that are not consistent with international humanitarian law,” Blinken said. He cited “the horrible loss of life of innocent civilians.”

The flow of aid into the Gaza Strip has almost entirely dried up in the past week, according to the United Nations, at a time when humanitarian agencies say the enclave needs a drastic increase in the amount of food, medicine and other goods to tackle a looming famine.

Since the start of the war, most aid for Gaza has entered through two border crossings in the southern end of the territory. Israel shut down one of those, Kerem Shalom, after a Hamas rocket attack nearby killed four Israeli soldiers on May 5.

The next day, Israel’s military seized and closed the second, in Rafah, on the Egyptian border, as part of what it called a “limited operation” against Hamas, bringing the flow of aid to a near-total stop.

Six trucks of flour arrived through the Kerem Shalom crossing on Saturday, and on Friday, some fuel also came through the same crossing point, according to Juliette Touma, the communications director for the main UN agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA. She said that no other supplies arrived through Kerem Shalom this past week and that the Rafah crossing remained closed.

“That’s all since May 6,” Touma said in a text message. “Basically nothing.”

The Israeli agency that coordinates aid to Palestinians, COGAT, said Sunday that Israel was “operating to enable the flow of aid to Rafah” through a road that runs through part of the length of the enclave. It did not provide additional details.

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