US Secretary of State reiterates administration to Israel’s crushing of the last 4 Hamas battalions in Rafah, demands plan for ‘day after.’
Antony BlinkenREUTERS/Remo Casilli
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed in an interview with CBS’s “Meet the Nation” today (Sunday) that Hamas will remain a problem in Gaza no matter what Israel does in Rafah, where the IDF is preparing to destroy the last four Hamas battalions.
According to Blinken, without a plan for the day after the war, Israel “will be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency because a lot of armed Hamas [terrorists] will be left, no matter what they do in Rafah.”
Blinken stated that whatever “initial success” Israel has in Rafah would not be worth it due to the “high cost to civilians.”
Addressing US President Joe Biden’s statement that the US would halt certain arms shipments to Israel to prevent the munitions from being used in Rafah, Blinken said that if Israel “launches this major military operation to Rafah, then there are certain systems that we’re not going to be supporting and supplying for that operation.”
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“If they leave and get out of Gaza, as we believe they need to do, then you’re going to have a vacuum that’s likely to be filled by chaos, anarchy, and ultimately by Hamas again,” he said.
“We want to make sure that Hamas cannot govern Gaza again,” he claimed, despite the administration’s pushing for a ceasefire that would preserve Hamas’s military and political power in Gaza. “We want to make sure it’s demilitarized. We want to make sure that Israel gets [Hamas’s] leaders… We have a different way, and we think a more effective, durable way of getting that done. We remain in conversation with Israel about exactly that.”
Content retrieved from: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/389825.