UPDATED 12:40 P.M.
TEL AVIV (Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday urged Israel to temporarily stop its military offensive on Gaza to allow for aid to enter the Palestinian enclave but faced pushback from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who rejected any such halt unless hostages held by Hamas militants are freed.
Blinken was in the Middle East for a second time in less than a month seeking to balance Washington support for Israel over a deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack with concern over civilian casualties that have soared under an Israeli bombardment.
While the United States has maintained robust support for Israel, its rhetoric has increasingly shifted towards boosting humanitarian aid to Gaza, taking steps to avoid civilian deaths and setting up pauses in the fighting to facilitate work to free more than 240 hostages seized by Hamas in Israel.
Speaking at a news conference, Blinken called for a humanitarian pause, saying it would allow for aid to enter Gaza, facilitate the work to secure the release of hostages while enabling Israel to achieve its goal of defeating Hamas.
He said he had discussed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s war cabinet how, when and where pauses can be implemented and what understandings must be reached. He said Washington recognised this would take time and require coordination from international partners.
His comments signalled any agreement with Israel remained elusive, with many sticking points yet to be hammered out.
“A number of legitimate questions were raised in our discussions today including how to use any period of pause to maximize the flow of humanitarian assistance, how to connect the pause to the release of hostages, how to ensure that Hamas doesn’t use these pauses or arrangements to its own advantage,” Blinken told reporters at a Tel Aviv press conference.
“These are issues that we need to tackle urgently, and we believe they can be solved.”
NO PAUSE WITHOUT HOSTAGES’ RELEASE, NETANYAHU SAYS
Speaking shortly after Blinken, Netanyahu in a televised statement rejected the idea. “I made clear that we are continuing full force and that Israel refuses a temporary ceasefire which does not include the release of our hostages.”
Like Israel, the United States has dismissed growing international calls for a ceasefire but has sought to persuade Israel to accept localized pauses.
Blinken, U.S. President Joe Biden’s top diplomat, last visited in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in which Israel says 1,400 people were killed, triggering the bloodiest escalation in years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Gaza health authorities say more than 9,000 people have been killed since Israel launched its assault on the enclave.
Ahead of a meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Blinken reiterated that Israel has a right to “do everything possible to ensure that this Oct. 7 can never happen again.”
Herzog said Israel was going to great lengths to notify residents of airstrikes, holding up one of the pamphlets that he said Israel had dropped telling civilians to leave north Gaza. He said Israel had urged Gazans to leave in text messages and phone calls ahead of the offensive.
Families of some of the hostages gathered outside the military complex in Tel Aviv where Blinken was meeting with Israel’s leaders. They called for there to be no ceasefire until Hamas releases all hostages.
Blinken said 100 humanitarian aid trucks were entering Gaza through Rafah crossing from Egypt daily but that was not enough.
“I spoke to Israeli leaders about tangible steps that can be taken to increase the sustained delivery of food, water, medicine, fuel and other essential needs, while putting in place measures to prevent diversions by Hamas and other terrorist groups,” Blinken said.
Another priority for Blinken has been to ensure the conflict does not spread.
Speaking at the same time as Blinken, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon, warned the United States that if Israel did not stop its assault on Gaza then the conflict could widen into a regional war.
Blinken said Washington was determined there should not be a second or third front in the conflict and that it was committed to deterring aggression from any party.
“”With regard to Lebanon, with regard to Hezbollah, with regard to Iran – we have been very clear from the outset that we are determined that there not be a second or third front opened in this conflict,” Blinken said when asked if the U.S. would be willing to turn its regional firepower on targets in Lebanon and Iran.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Ari Rabinovich; Additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Maayan Lubell and James Mackenzie; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Howard Goller)
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GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Friday to push for humanitarian pauses in the Gaza war after Israel said its troops had surrounded the Palestinian enclave’s biggest city, the focus of its drive to wipe out Hamas.
Israeli forces again pounded the Gaza Strip from ground, sea and air throughout the night amid global alarm over horrendous conditions inside the besieged territory and rising number of deaths of Palestinian civilians.
Allied militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said their fighters had detonated explosive devices against advancing troops, dropped grenades from drones, and fired mortars and anti-tank rockets in fierce urban warfare around destroyed buildings.
Blinken, on his second trip to Israel in a month, is due to discuss with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concrete steps to minimize harm to civilians in Gaza, where food, fuel, water and medicine are running out, buildings have been flattened, and thousands of people have fled homes to escape relentless bombings.
The White House said any pauses in fighting should be temporary and localized. It has dismissed calls from Arab and several other nations for a full ceasefire in the war, now in its 28th day.
“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,” Blinken told reporters before leaving for Israel.
“So this is something that we have an obligation to respond to, and we will.”
Gaza health authorities say at least 9,061 people – many of them women and children – have been killed since Israel started its assault on the enclave of 2.3 million people in retaliation for deadly attacks by Hamas militants on southern Israel.
Israel says Hamas killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 240 hostages in the attacks on Oct. 7, the deadliest day of its 75-year history.
ENCIRCLED
On Thursday, Netanyahu said the military had encircled Gaza City and was advancing. The Israeli military said on Friday its war planes, artillery and navy had struck Hamas targets overnight, killing several militants including Mustafa Dalul, a Hamas commander it said had directed combat in Gaza.
There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas.
In one Israeli air strike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, a local journalist working for the official Palestine TV and at least nine of his immediate family were killed in their house, relatives and health officials said.
The United Arab Emirates, one of a handful of Arab states with diplomatic ties to Israel, said on Friday it was working “relentlessly” for an immediate ceasefire, warning that the risk of regional spillover and further escalation was real.
Israel has dismissed these calls, saying it targets Hamas fighters whom it accuses of intentionally hiding among the population and civilian buildings.
Blinken is due to meet Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in Amman on Saturday. In a statement, Safadi said Israel must end the war on Gaza, where he said it was committing war crimes by bombing civilians and imposing a siege.
The Israeli military said its troops and tanks were encountering mines and booby traps as they advanced in Gaza. Hamas fighters were making use of a vast underground tunnel network to stage hit-and-run attacks.
Israel has said it has lost 23 soldiers in the offensive.
Abu Ubaida, spokesperson for the armed wing of Hamas, said in a televised speech that Israel’s death toll in Gaza was much higher. “Your soldiers will return in black bags,” he said.
Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the United States was flying intelligence-gathering drones over Gaza to help locate hostages.
CROSSING
The Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egypt was due to open for a third day on Friday for limited evacuations under a Qatari-brokered deal aimed at letting some foreign passport holders, their dependents and some wounded Gazans out of the enclave.
According to border officials, more than 700 foreign citizens left for Egypt via Rafah on the two previous days. Dozens of critically injured Palestinians were to cross too. Israel asked foreign countries to send hospital ships for them.
Israel also sent back around 7,000 Palestinian workers in Israel and the West Bank before Oct. 7 to Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south. Workers said they had been detained and ill-treated by Israeli authorities.
Those who live in Gaza City and the north will have to find shelter elsewhere as the Israeli forces have cut off roads.
While Israel intensifies its assault against Hamas, diplomats in the United Nations, Washington and the Middle East have started floating ideas for a post-Hamas Gaza – provided Israel succeeds in removing the Iran-backed militant group, which has ruled the enclave since 2007.
Israel has so far failed to come up with an endgame to the conflict, and a source familiar with the matter said discussions so far include the deployment of a multinational force, an interim Palestinian-led administration that would exclude Hamas, a stopgap security and governance role for neighboring Arab states, and temporary U.N. supervision of the territory.
A group of independent United Nations human rights experts warned that Palestinians in Gaza are at “grave risk of genocide”. The Israeli mission to the U.N. in Geneva called the rapporteur’s comments “deplorable and deeply concerning” and blamed Hamas for the civilian deaths.
Palestinians trapped in Gaza City hoped that a truce could be reached soon.
“Does the world wait for hundreds of thousands who refuse to leave their home, who have no guilt but that they don’t want to leave their country, to be massacred by Israel?” said one.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Dan Williams, Emily Rose, Maytaal Angel in Jerusalem, Clauda Tanios in Dubai, Patricia Zengerle, Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali in Washington; additional reporting by Reuters bureaux worldwide; Writing by Michael Perry and Angus MacSwan, Editing by Miral Fahmy and Andrew Cawthorne)
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