By Humeyra Pamuk
TEL AVIV (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israel on Wednesday to use the opportunity to end the war in Gaza created by the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and the destruction of much of the group’s capacity during more than a year of conflict.
Blinken said Israel had achieved many of its goals including largely destroying Hamas as a military force and eliminating most of its leadership, including Sinwar, and should be looking to bring home the remaining Gaza hostages and end the fighting.
“Now is the time to turn those successes into an enduring strategic success,” he told reporters as he prepared to leave for Riyadh on the next stage of his visit to the Middle East.
“The focus needs to be on getting the hostages home, ending this war and having a clear plan for what follows,” he said.
What comes next in Gaza will be critical and there needs to be “clear and concrete plans” for the future of the coastal enclave, which would not be controlled either by Hamas or Israel, he said.
“We have to end the war in a way that keeps Hamas out and makes sure that Israel doesn’t stay. Israel does not want to stay,” he said.
Blinken also said Israel needed to do more to ensure that adequate humanitarian supplies reached people living in dire conditions, most recently in the northern section of Gaza where Israel has been pressing people to evacuate.
“We’ve seen progress but it’s not enough,” he said.
Israel’s campaign, triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas that killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken as hostages, has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza, devastated the enclave and forced most of its population out of their homes into temporary shelters. It will require a major international effort to rebuild.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has not formulated any clear vision for Gaza following the war beyond stating that Palestinian militant group Hamas’ military and governing capacity needed to be dismantled completely.
There has been wide concern among Palestinians that Israel intends to force Palestinians from large stretches of the Gaza Strip to enable greater Israeli control of the area and potentially allow Jewish settlers to return following their withdrawal in 2005.
Blinken repeated that the United States rejected any Israeli occupation of Gaza and said he had been assured by Netanyahu that Israel had no such plans, despite pressure from many in his own party to allow settlers to return.
“It’s been U.S. policy, it will remain U.S. policy, and it’s also, to the best of my understanding, the policy of the Israeli government, that I heard from the prime minister, who is the authoritative word on these things,” he said.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, writing James Mackenzie, editing by Andrew Heavens and Ros Russell)
