Courtesy of JNS. Photo credit: Chuck Kennedy/U.S. State Department
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken talks to the press before leaving Ben-Gurion Airport International in Tel Aviv, Israel, en route to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 23, 2024
(JNS) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a Wednesday morning press conference at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv before boarding a plane to Saudi Arabia, that Israel is not doing enough to aid Palestinians in Gaza. In response to a question from a reporter, he replied that multiple senior State Department officials are monitoring Israel’s progress on humanitarian aid daily.
“This is exactly why we’re so intensely focused on this issue,” he told a reporter, who asked for evidence that Israel has made progress on aiding Palestinians.
Blinken noted that trucks with aid are getting into Gaza. “There are a lot of challenges that go along with that, including lawlessness, including looting,” he said. “But Israel has to maximize everything it has under its control in order to get the food in.”
“We’ve had periods before where the Israelis have increased what they’re doing only to see it fall back,” he added. “So we’re tracking this very, very, very carefully, and we went over it in some detail.”
The progress that Washington has seen since Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin penned a letter to Israeli counterparts, calling for the Jewish states to make changes within 30 days, is “not enough,” Blinken said at the Tel Aviv press conference.
“We’ve seen progress in the opening of the Erez crossing. We’ve seen progress in the reanimation of the Jordanian corridor. We’ve seen progress in the opening of a fifth crossing point and other steps that have been taken,” the U.S. secretary said. “We have a list of things that we’re going through one by one, systematically, with our Israeli counterparts to make sure that they follow through on.”
“We’ve told them very clearly in the letter that we expect these steps to be taken within 30 days but starting immediately,” Blinken added. “They have started, and we’re tracking this, as I say, every single day. We have senior officials from the department whose job is to focus on that every day. That’s exactly what they’re doing.”
David May, the research manager and a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that “it is critical for the United States and Israel to ensure that Gaza’s civilian population has the resources it needs and that it is able to get out of harm’s way during Israel’s counter-Hamas operations.”
“Ultimately, the U.S. pressure on Israel to slow down its operations, including pressure not to operate in Rafah, has extended this war. Many Palestinians in Gaza continue to be displaced, even during lulls in fighting,” May said. “It is in everyone’s interest to allow Israel to eliminate Hamas as a threat quickly.”
The Jewish state has “teams in place monitoring the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and they meet regularly with the Americans and other stakeholders to assess potential causes for concern,” May added. “The key for success is supporting practical humanitarian measures for Palestinian civilians, not empty displays for political purposes.”
Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum and senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security, told JNS that if Washington really wants to help the situation in Gaza, it should “force Qatar and Turkey to pressure Hamas into accepting the U.S.-brokered deal and release of the hostages,” rather than “putting more pressure on Israel, who are already doing everything we can, while being forced to fight a seven-front war against Iran.”
Blinken also told reporters in Tel Aviv that “Israel has achieved most of its strategic objectives when it comes to Gaza, all with the idea of making sure that Oct. 7 could never happen again.”
“In the space of the year, it’s managed to dismantle Hamas’s military capacity. It’s destroyed much of its arsenal. It’s eliminated its senior leadership, including, most recently, Yahya Sinwar,” he added. “This has come at the cost — the great cost — of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Now is the time to turn those successes into an enduring strategic success.”
That leaves two remaining tasks, according to Blinken. “Get the hostages home and bring the war to an end with an understanding of what will follow,” he said. “That’s what we’ve been working on this past day and will continue to work on throughout this trip.”
“I believe that with Sinwar gone because he was the primary obstacle for realizing the hostage agreement, there is a real opportunity to bring them home and to accomplish the objective,” he added, of the hostages.
