Antony Blinken stuns with public criticism of Israeli conduct in Gaza

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 re-emerged in parts of Gaza, Blinken said, and “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, 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.” More than a million Palestinians have crowded into Rafah in hopes of refuge as Israel’s offensive pushed across Gaza. Israel has said the city also hosts four battalions of Hamas fighters.

Israel’s conduct of the war, Blinken 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