Israel must take a series of “concrete steps … to minimize civilian casualties” in Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said amid a growing international outcry over Israel’s conduct in the war against Hamas.
“We will be talking about concrete steps that can and should be taken to minimize harm to men, women, and children in Gaza,” Blinken said on Thursday. “When I see a Palestinian child — a boy, a girl — pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building, that hits me in the gut as much as seeing a child from Israel or anywhere else. So this is something that we have an obligation to respond to, and we will.”
BIDEN HECKLED BY RABBI CALLING FOR GAZA CEASEFIRE DURING CAMPAIGN STOP
Blinken is making his third trip to Israel since the Hamas terrorist rampage that ignited the war on Oct. 7 and his first since acknowledging that “humanitarian pauses must be considered” during a Senate appearance this week. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has resisted such demands on the grounds that it would benefit Hamas.
“Our answer is no,” Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog, who leads the Israeli Embassy in Washington, told the Jewish People Policy Institute on Thursday. “They should not approach us on that. … We are not going to talk about a ceasefire in the middle of the war because that means a victory to Hamas.”
Israeli forces bombarded the Gaza Strip for weeks in anticipation of a ground offensive. Their stated goal of eradicating the terrorist organization raises the specter of intense urban warfare, which can take a horrendous toll on civilians in any conflict.
“We remain convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide,” a group of seven United Nations special rapporteurs said Thursday. “The time for action is now. Israel’s allies also bear responsibility and must act now to prevent its disastrous course of action.”
Meanwhile, at the World Health Organization, officials argued that Israel is failing to meet necessary standards for humanitarian aid to flow to civilians.
“WHO will do everything we can to ensure that all people in Gaza have access to life saving health and humanitarian services,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Thursday. “In the current situation this is almost impossible. At the very least, we need a humanitarian pause in the fighting, and ideally an end to the conflict.”
Israel Defense Forces officials have rejected allegations they are targeting civilians, although a senior general acknowledged in the early days of the conflict that they were “not being surgical” in their strikes on military targets. The IDF also counters that Hamas has adopted a policy of using Palestinian civilians as human shields, which is a war crime. Hamas instructed Palestinian civilians to ignore an evacuation order from the IDF.
“And this, again, is a crossfire quite literally of Hamas’s making,” Blinken agreed. “The fact that it cynically and monstrously, deliberately has people — men, women, and children — as human shields, puts its command posts, puts its leadership, puts its fighters, puts its weapons, puts its munitions underneath hospitals or even inside them — schools, mosques — makes this incredibly challenging.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The conduct of the war is additionally complicated by the fact that Hamas seized more than 200 hostages on Oct. 7 and brought them into Gaza, leaving desperate families in Israel to press Netanyahu for a solution that would secure their release.
“The second big objective, of course, is to continue our efforts to get humanitarian assistance in and to get our citizens and nationals out of Gaza,” Blinken said. “Of course, we’re intensely focused every single day on the hostages and taking every possible step that we can, in concert with others, to secure their release.”
