Israel must not reoccupy the Gaza Strip or annex any Palestinian territory after the war against Hamas, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned following a meeting with leading democratic powers.
“The United States believes key elements should include no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza — not now, not after the war,” Blinken said in Japan. “No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza.”
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Blinken framed that series of principles as reflective of the consensus in Israel, as well as the United States. Yet it stands as a warning against policy proposals that have been forecast by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials in the midst of the war against Hamas, which has dominated Gaza since 2007 but provoked an unprecedented clash with Israel through the Oct. 7 terrorist attack that killed more than 1,400 people in Israel.
“I know it’s hard to look ahead in this moment,” Blinken said after a meeting with his counterparts across the G7, a block of the world’s leading industrialized democracies. “It is the aim of terrorists to sow chaos, to destroy hope, to destroy lives, and, through human despair, grow their ranks and hijack the political future of the Palestinians. We cannot and we will not let them succeed.”
Netanyahu’s government has faced pressure from U.S. officials to plan the war in Gaza with an eye on the aftermath of the conflict. Some senior Israeli leaders, in the process, have signaled a plan that runs contrary to Blinken’s outline.
“At the end of this war, not only will Hamas no longer be in Gaza, but the territory of Gaza will also decrease,” Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said last month.
Cohen is a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party in the Israeli coalition government. Yet it was the prime minister’s statement about security in Gaza after the war that drew a pair of warnings from the U.S. this week.
“I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it,” Netanyahu told ABC. “When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.”
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Blinken’s message built on a White House warning that “a reoccupation of Gaza by Israeli forces is not good” for Israel. And Blinken emphasized that a “post-crisis governance” should be characterized by the Palestinians, toward the end of finalizing a two-state solution.
“We must also work on the affirmative elements to get to a sustained peace,” he said. “It must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority. And it must include a sustained mechanism for reconstruction in Gaza and a pathway to Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in states of their own, with equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity, and dignity.”
