TEL AVIV — Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli leaders confronted each other Friday about the future of the war in Gaza, with the top U.S. diplomat urging Israel not to invade a city packed with civilians, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defiantly declaring that “we’ll do it by ourselves.”
The tense back-and-forth — on the same day that Israel’s far-right finance minister announced the seizure of three square miles of Palestinian territory in the West Bank — marked the latest show of Israeli defiance in the face of U.S. demands that it reduce civilian suffering in Gaza and move toward a two-state solution.
The exchange came at the end of Blinken’s trip to the region and appeared to signal that Israeli leaders have little interest in moderating their actions in Gaza, despite increasingly sharp criticism from their main military backer and ally.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 31,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s five-month military campaign, which was launched in response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks in which militants killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and took more than 250 hostage.
While the Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its published death toll, Palestinian officials say most of the dead are women and children. Many across the besieged enclave are now fighting for survival: On Monday, a U.N.-backed report said that famine may already have reached the northern region and that more than half of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents face catastrophic levels of hunger.
Before his arrival Friday, Blinken spent days meeting with Arab leaders to try to finalize a plan for post-conflict Gaza that would eventually lead to Palestinian statehood. The West Bank land seizure would directly undermine that effort.
A major military ground operation in Rafah “risks killing more civilians; it risks wreaking greater havoc with the provision of humanitarian assistance,” Blinken told reporters in Tel Aviv after his day of meetings with Israeli leaders. “It risks further isolating Israel around the world and jeopardizing its long-term security and standing.”
The Biden administration has proed strong support to Israel throughout the conflict, approving more than 100 weapons sales to the country since Oct. 7 and proing diplomatic cover at the U.N. Security Council, where it has vetoed a number of resolutions calling for an immediate cease-fire.
For now, U.S. leaders appear unwilling to use the most direct leverage they have, which would involve imposing conditions on the supply of U.S. military equipment to Israel. Blinken was asked repeatedly during his trip whether the United States might halt or slow aid to Israel if it invades Rafah or if the conflict continues, and each time he said he would not speculate about hypotheticals.
But as American frustrations over Israel’s conduct in the war increase, the Biden administration’s rhetoric, at least, has grown tougher, and on Friday, U.S. representatives at the Security Council sponsored a resolution calling for a pause in the fighting. It was vetoed by Russia and China.
While Biden has summoned senior Israeli officials to Washington next week to outline U.S. concerns about a Rafah invasion and to suggest tactics that might target Hamas without major loss of civilian life, Netanyahu showed little sign Friday that he was about to relent.
“I told him we acknowledge the need to evacuate civilians from war zones and of course take care of humanitarian needs, and we are making sure this happens,” Netanyahu said in a statement following his meeting with Blinken. “But I also told him there’s no way to defeat Hamas without entering Rafah and eliminating the rest of Hamas’s battalions. I told him we hope we can do it with the support of the U.S., but if needed, we’ll do it by ourselves.”
In appealing for support, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the resolution reflected an effort to overcome council divisions. It marked the first time that the United States has directly called for an “immediate” cease-fire. It also condemned Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
But calling the measure a “hypocritical initiative” that played into U.S. and Israeli hands, Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya told members: “If you do this, you will cover yourselves in disgrace.”
Russia and China have called for an immediate cease-fire without conditions. Nebenzya charged that the U.S. wording of the resolution — which joined its cease-fire call with support for U.S. efforts to negotiate a temporary pause in fighting while hostages are released and humanitarian aid is increased — an effort to “sell a product.”
“The American product is exceedingly politicized,” he said, “the sole purpose of which is to help play to the [U.S.] voters, to throw them a bone in the form of some kind of a mention of a cease-fire.”
Responding to the vote on the resolution, which Algeria also opposed, Thomas-Greenfield said it could impede the cease-fire and hostage-release negotiations.
“Russia, which has carried out an unprovoked war on its neighbor, has the audacity and the hypocrisy to throw stones when it lives in a glass house,” she said, referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
U.S. officials say they are nearing an agreement with Arab nations to present Israel with a package deal to resolve the Gaza situation with an eventual goal of establishing a Palestinian state.
The package would include a plan for how to administer Gaza and rebuild the bombarded territory, and Arab states would offer guarantees for Israel’s security. Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel, a major step in Israel’s ties with the region. In return, Israeli leaders would have to agree to a two-state solution and to other steps that would boost the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority, which Netanyahu has long derided.
The plan, in effect, is a shoot-the-moon effort to try to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all — and U.S. officials acknowledge it is a long shot with the current Israeli government. But they say that, having created the vision, they hope it will be attractive enough to Israelis that they decide to pursue it.
U.S. officials hope to be able to present the plan during a cease-fire and hostage release — which Blinken said continue to be negotiated in Qatar between Israel and Hamas, with Qatari, Egyptian and U.S. teams as interlocutors.
“We have teams in Doha, and as I said, we’ve gotten it down to a few remaining gaps, but the closer you get to the goal line, the harder that last yard is, so there are some hard issues to work through,” Blinken said.
While in Tel Aviv, Blinken met in private with the families of U.S. citizens being held hostage by Hamas. As he departed, he also spoke briefly to a group of family members of Israeli hostages and their supporters, who were demonstrating to ask for his help in achieving a cease-fire and hostage deal. “We’re working to bring them home,” Blinken said as he shook their hands on a street near the Tel Aviv beachfront.
“There’s a lot of tragedy and pain and suffering in this area and we want the Americans to help us end the bloodshed,” said Tzipi Haitovsky, one of the organizers of the demonstration. “It doesn’t matter what your politics are,” she said. “There’s no excuse for holding citizens hostage.”
In Gaza, people described the deepening horrors of a conflict with no clear end in sight.
Tahani Qaoud, 38, a mother of two living in the besieged northern region, couldn’t find diapers or milk for her 6-month-old daughter, or food and water to quiet her hungry 3-year-old, she said by phone.
Her husband, Ahmed, was among hundreds of desperate Gazans who had thronged aid trucks that reached Gaza City’s Kuwait circle last week. Ahmed was struck by a tank shell and bled to death, Qaoud said.
The Israeli military denied that its forces fired any weapons into the crowds.
“I am very tired after all the death,” she said. “Their father went out to get them food. For nothing. He returned dead.”
Any pause in hostilities would be used to try to rapidly increase the flow of aid into Gaza. On Tuesday, the United Nations’ top human rights official, Volker Türk, described the humanitarian crisis as “human-made” and “entirely preventable.”
“The situation of hunger, starvation and famine is a result of Israel’s extensive restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid and commercial goods, displacement of most of the population, as well as the destruction of crucial civilian infrastructure,” he said.
Israel denies that it is limiting the flow of aid into Gaza, blaming the United Nations for failing to distribute aid and Hamas militants for diverting it from those in need.
With land deliveries doing little to stanch the growing crisis, the United States has expanded aid drops to Gaza, with flights now operating from of Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East.
The United States has also announced that a floating pier will be built off Gaza’s coast, allowing food to be brought in by ship from Cyprus, although the pier is not expected to be operational for several months. Aid groups have criticized airdrops and deliveries by sea as ineffective substitutes for deliveries by road.
“Ultimately, the most effective way to proe this assistance beyond using every means available are land routes,” said Timmy Davis, the U.S. ambassador to Qatar, speaking on an Al Udeid tarmac Thursday beside two C-17 cargo planes with thousands of prepared meals.
DeYoung reported from Washington, Loveluck from London, and Berger from Jerusalem. Alon Rom in Tel Aviv and Susannah George in Al Udeid, Qatar, contributed to this report.
