“Blinken to urge Israel to show restraint in campaign to destroy Hamas”, The Guardian
Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor, London, Fri 3 Nov 2023
US secretary of state in Tel Aviv to call for pauses in fighting to allow more aid to enter Gaza
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, has arrived in Tel Aviv to meet Israel’s war cabinet and urge it to show greater restraint in its campaign to destroy Hamas, starting by allowing more aid to enter Gaza and implementing humanitarian pauses.
Israel says it has Hamas surrounded in Gaza City and has shown no willingness to back a break in the fighting advocated by the US president, Joe Biden, let alone agree a ceasefire.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 9,000 people have been killed in the territory since 7 October, when Hamas militants crossed into Israel and killed more than 1,400 people.
In some of the strongest criticism of Israel by a leader of an EU member state, the Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “something approaching revenge”.
Blinken’s visit coincides with a long-awaited speech by the head of the influential Iran-backed Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, in which he is expected to broadly warn there are red lines that Israel must not cross if a fully fledged war across two fronts is to be avoided. Nasrallah has been unusually silent as he faces growing calls from Hamas to join the battle.
In weeks-long skirmishing along the border between Lebanon and Israel, the Iranian-funded Hezbollah has already lost 50 fighters, but it has not yet unleashed its full arsenal, partly fearing the consequences of all-out war on its organisation and Lebanon. Hezbollah is regarded as the jewel in Iran’s regional network of militia that terms itself the “axis of resistance”.
Before the speech, shelling continued in southern Lebanon, with the outskirts of al-Qawzah, Aita al-Shaab, and Ramieh all under fire by Israeli artillery, the Lebanese state-run National News Agency reported.
The widespread expectation is that Hezbollah will hold back from declaring all-out war, but the slow escalation of violence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon is making the situation incredibly volatile. A United Arab Emirates foreign minister, Noura al-Kaabi, said the risk of regional spillover was growing and that would be used by extremists to “keep us locked in cycles of extremism”.
Blinken is walking a diplomatic tightrope since he will not want to say anything that detracts from US support for Israel’s right to self-defence, but at the same time he will stiffen his mantra that the way Israel conducts operations matters not only morally but in terms of retaining international support.
Twenty-three Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ground offensive started. Early on Friday, Israel said it had killed Mustafa Dalul, the commander of Hamas’s al-Sabra Tal al-Hawa battalion, who took part in fighting against Israeli forces in Gaza.
In advance of his meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Tel Aviv, Blinken said he would seek “concrete measures” from Israel to ensure that harm to Palestinian civilians was reduced. Israel says the high death toll is due to the way Hamas fighters hide among civilians and set up roadblocks that make it difficult for civilians to move south to relatively safer areas in Gaza.
The British security minister, Tom Tugendhat, said he was not going to get into discussions about whether particular strikes breached international law.
In an attempt to justify its refusal to allow fuel into Gaza, the Israeli army released a recording of a conversation that it said featured a Hamas health ministry official who admitted that the organisation kept fuel stockpiles beneath Dar al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
In the recording, the official is heard saying “they have a million [litres] underground”. The authenticity of the recording is unknown.
Blinken is also seeking details of how many hostages Israel believes are still alive, and an update on the talks between Israel and Hamas mediated by Qatar for their release. The US secretary of state has said he believes it is not too early to discuss what happens when the Israeli operation ends.
After meeting the Israelis, Blinken will fly to Jordan, a country that has cut off ties with Israel, and is at the centre of the Arab calls for an immediate ceasefire.
The pressure to show greater restraint is not coming only from the US. In a statement, France said it “condemns the attacks against United Nations sites and humanitarian personnel”, reflecting French disapproval of Israeli strikes on the Jabalia, the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
A government spokesperson said: “France condemns the attacks against United Nations sites and humanitarian personnel whose work is essential to the civilian populations of Gaza.”
Varadkar, the Irish PM, told journalists during a visit to South Korea: “I strongly believe that … Israel has the right to defend itself, has the right to go after Hamas, that they cannot do this again.
“What I’m seeing unfolding at the moment isn’t just self-defence. It looks, resembles something more approaching revenge. That’s not where we should be. And I don’t think that’s how Israel will guarantee future freedom and future security.”