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Blinken criticizes Israel's war plans

2024-05-13 13:41:56, Kosova & Bota CNA

US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made some of the harshest public statements yet about Israel regarding its war in Gaza. The top US diplomat said Israeli tactics had produced "a terrible loss of innocent civilian life" but had failed to neutralize the leaders and fighters of Hamas - the Palestinian group designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union - which could lead to a sustained insurgency.

In two television interviews, Blinken stressed that the US believes Israeli forces "must leave Gaza", but also said he expects to see credible plans from Israel for security and governance in the territory after the war ends.

Hamas has re-emerged in parts of Gaza, Blinken said, and "a tough move" by Israeli forces in the southern city of Rafah would risk leaving Washington's closest ally in the Middle East facing "a sustainable insurgency".

He said the US has been working with Arab states and others for weeks to develop "credible plans for security, for governance, for reconstruction" in Gaza, but "we haven't seen that done by Israel. .. We have to see this".

Blinken also said that as Israel pushes deeper into Gaza, a military operation there "may initially succeed" but risks causing "terrible harm" to the population without solving the problem "that we want to solve, which is that Hamas cannot govern again with Gaza".

More than 1 million Palestinians have taken refuge in Gaza due to fighting in other parts of the territory. Israel has said that there are also four Hamas battalions in this city.

The way Israel is waging war, Blinken said, has put the country "on a trajectory, potentially inheriting an insurgency with many armed Hamas fighters, or the vacuum being filled with chaos, with anarchy and likely this vacuum will be filled by Hamas."

Blinken also for the first time reiterated the findings of a report presented last week to Congress that said weapons provided by the US to Israel, which were used in Gaza, potentially violated international humanitarian law.

"When it comes to the use of weapons, concerns about incidents where taking into account the harm caused to children, women, men, it is reasonable to assess that in some cases, Israel has acted in ways that are not in accordance with international humanitarian law ", he said.

Blinken also spoke with Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday, to whom he reiterated US opposition to the Rafah offensive, the US State Department said.

The war in Gaza began on October 7, after Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapping nearly 250 others. Israel's offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza./ REL