23 minutes agoBlinken criticises Israel's war plans
Periskopi(2 years ago)
(2 years ago)US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has issued some of the harshest public statements yet for Israel about his war in Gaza. The American top diplomat said Israeli tactics have produced “a terrible loss of the lives of innocent civilians”, but have failed to neutralise the leaders and warriors of [...]
In two television interviews, Blinken stressed that the US believes Israeli forces “should leave Gaza”, but also said he expects to see reliable plans by Israel for security and governance on this territory after the war ends.
Hamas has resurfaced in parts of Gaza, Blinken said, and “a tough move” by Israeli forces in the southern town of Rafah, would risk leaving Washington's closest ally in the Middle East to confront a stable “uprising.
He said the US has been working with Arab states and others for weeks to develop “reliable security plans for governance, for reconstruction” in Gaza, but “we have not seen this done by Israel... We need to see this thing”.
Blinken also said that while Israel is moving deeper into Gaza, a military operation there “may initially succeed”, but risks causing terrible “to the population by not solving the “problem that we want to solve, which is that Hamas cannot rule again with Gaza”.
More than 1 million Palestinians have been sheltered in Gaza because of fighting in other parts of the territory. Israel has said that there are four battalions of Hamas in this city.
The way Israel is waging war, Blinken said, has caused the state to be “in a trajectory, potentially inheriting a uprising with many armed Hamas fighters, or for the vacuum to be filled with chaos, with anarchy, and that this vacuum will probably be filled by Hamas”.
Blinken also for the first time reiterated the findings of a report presented last week in Congress that said the weapons the US has offered to Israel, which were used in Gaza, have potentially violated international humanitarian law.
When it comes to using weapons, worries about incidents where the damage done to children, women, men is reasonable to estimate that, in some cases, Israel has acted in ways that do not comply with international humanitarian law”, he said.
Blinken has also talked with Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who has reiterated US opposition to the offensive in Rafah, the US State Department said.
The Gaza War began on October 7 after Hamas attacked the south of Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping some 250 others. Israel's offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. /rel/
