November 30, 2023
Although the original truce deal between Hamas and Israel ended this morning, negotiations kept it going for another day. The extension was hard won after Hamas could not produce a list that had ten women and children on it, a condition of the deal. Israel rejected a list of seven living women and children and the bodies of three more Hamas claimed were killed by Israeli airstrikes. The Israeli government did agree to accept the two Israeli-Russian hostages who were released yesterday as part of Thursday’s list.
Israel has agreed to extend the truce so long as Hamas produces ten living women and children a day, but negotiators think that Hamas will not be able to meet that requirement much longer. When it cannot, Israel says it will recommence the war.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is currently in Israel for the fourth time since the October 7 attack, said today that he is there to work “to extend the pause so that we can continue to get more hostages out of Gaza and more assistance in.” After describing the pressing needs of the Palestinians in Gaza, he asserted that the government of Israel “agrees with the imperative of humanitarian assistance and the need to sustain it.”
Blinken noted that Israel “intends to resume its military operations against Hamas when Hamas stops releasing hostages,” and he said the United States agrees that “Israel has the right to do everything it can to ensure that the slaughter Hamas carried out on October 7th can never be repeated.” That means, he said, “Hamas cannot remain in control of Gaza,” and he pointed to an attack this morning on a Jerusalem bus stop, for which Hamas claimed responsibility, that killed three Israeli citizens and wounded at least six others, including two American citizens.
But, Blinken continued, “the way Israel defends itself matters. It’s imperative that Israel act in accordance with international humanitarian law and the laws of war, even when confronting a terrorist group that respects neither.” Blinken said that when he met today with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Israeli officials, “I made clear that before Israel resumes major military operations, it must put in place humanitarian civilian protection plans that minimize further casualties of innocent Palestinians.”
They must, he said, protect Gazans by designating places in central and southern Gaza where they are out of the line of fire. They must avoid more displacement of citizens in Gaza and allow those already displaced to return as soon as conditions permit. They must avoid further damage to “life-critical infrastructure, like hospitals, like power stations, like water facilities.”
Even though Hamas embeds itself with civilians, “Israel has…one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world,” Blinken said. “It is capable of neutralizing the threat posed by Hamas while minimizing harm to innocent men, women, and children. And it has an obligation to do so. Ultimately, that’s not just the right thing to do, it’s also in Israel’s security interest.”
Blinken said that Netanyahu and the members of the Israeli war cabinet “agreed with the need for this approach.” Blinken added that he had “underscored the imperative to the United States that the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale we saw in northern Gaza not be repeated in the south. As I told the prime minister, intent matters, but so does the result.”
Blinken noted that Hamas, too, could defuse the situation. It could release the remaining hostages immediately, “stop using civilians as human shields and stop using civilian infrastructure to stage and launch terrorist attacks.” It “could lay down its arms, surrender the leaders who are responsible for the slaughter, the torture, the rapes of October 7th. Hamas could renounce its stated goal of eliminating Israel, killing Jews, and repeating the atrocities of October 7th again and again and again.”
He added that “everyone around the world who cares about protecting innocent civilians, innocent lives, should be calling on Hamas—indeed, demanding of Hamas—that it immediately stop its murderous acts of terror and deplorable use of innocent men, women, and children as human shields.”
Blinken reiterated that he had discussed with both Israel and Palestinian leaders in the West Bank the need to keep the conflict from spreading, “whether to the West Bank, to Israel’s northern border, or to the broader region.” To that end, he expressed “our deep concerns about steps that could escalate tensions in the West Bank, including extremist settler violence and proposals from parts of the Israeli coalition government to further expand settlements,” both key policies of the Netanyahu government. “I made clear our expectations about addressing these issues,” he said.
He clarified for a reporter that the U.S. is “looking to the Israeli Government to take some additional steps to really put a stop to this. And at the same time, we’re considering our own steps.”
Breaking the cycle of violence in order to ensure Israel’s security, he said, “demands improving the lives of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in immediate, tangible ways, and providing them with a credible path toward their legitimate aspiration for statehood.” To a reporter’s question, Blinken answered that the administration does, in fact, hope to see a revitalized Palestinian Authority that can speak for the Palestinians.
This was an extraordinarily strong statement, delivered in Tel Aviv itself, and a far cry from Blinken’s usual diplomatic language, which was on display at a press opportunity with Israeli president Isaac Herzog before the two began their meeting. Herzog eulogized “a giant, a titan—Dr. Henry Kissinger,” expressing admiration for the former secretary of state, who died yesterday, and praising the “peaceful results” of his “great decisions…and processes” (likely referring to Kissinger’s work to end the 1973 Mideast war after Syria and Egypt attacked Israel).
But for all that Herzog and others praised Kissinger, his pragmatic view of diplomacy meant that he oversaw the coup that deposed popularly elected Chilean president Salvador Allende and replaced him with vicious right–wing dictator General Augusto Pinochet, prolonged the war in Vietnam, supported the secret bombing of Cambodia, and so on, becoming responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and, for many people, becoming the face of American arrogance in foreign affairs, a legacy Biden’s State Department is still working to overcome.
Blinken answered: “Few people were better students of history—even fewer people did more to shape history—than Henry Kissinger.”
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Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/30/politics/israel-and-hamas-truce-extension
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/30/jerusalem-bus-stop-shooting-attack-killed-injured
https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-a-press-availability-43/
Many various headlines about Kissinger today, but this one from Rolling Stone caught my eye, "Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies."
One's admiration of Blinken grows.