The United States has once again issued a strong warning to Israel over its lack of a post-war strategy for Gaza, leaving open questions about how the territory will be governed and stabilized.
Speaking at a news conference in the Moldovan capital Chisinau on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it was “imperative” for Israel to have a plan to ensure the defeat of Hamas and restore security and governance in Gaza.
“Absent a plan for tomorrow, there will be no tomorrow,” Blinken told reporters.
He added that the Israeli military had achieved “real success” in its efforts to destroy Hamas’ military capacity, but he warned that Israel should not be directly responsible for Gaza’s future.
“If that is the case, he will simply have on his hands a sustainable insurgency for as far into the future as we can see,” Blinken said.
In the absence of a post-war plan, Blinken added: “Hamas will remain in control, which is unacceptable. Otherwise, we will have chaos, anarchy and a vacuum that will be filled again by Hamas or perhaps – if we can imagine – something even worse.”
US officials have publicly pressured Israel for a so-called “morning after plan”, saying Gaza should be governed by a “reformed” Palestinian Authority (PA) after the war.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the idea of ceding the enclave to the Palestinian Authority, emphasizing that Israel would maintain its security control over the occupied Palestinian territories, including the West Bank and Gaza.
Israeli leaders also say they are aiming for a “total defeat” of Hamas.
Although US President Joe Biden’s administration has focused on what will happen to Gaza after the war, it remains unclear when or how the violence will end.
On Wednesday, Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said the war would not end before the end of the year.
“The fighting in Gaza will continue for at least another seven months,” he told Israeli public radio, according to the Jerusalem Post newspaper.
The war began on October 7, 2023 and after nearly eight months of fighting, Hamas remains active throughout the Gaza Strip. Israel is in the process of invading Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, which it describes as the last stronghold of Hamas in this territory.
The international community, however, has warned Israel against a military offensive in Rafah, where around 1.5 million civilians have fled to avoid bombing elsewhere in the enclave.
This month’s fighting has nonetheless displaced more than a million people from the city, according to United Nations estimates.
Although they present Rafah as the last front, Israeli forces have also engaged in fierce fighting with Palestinian fighters in Jabalia and Gaza City, north of Gaza, where the Israeli military said in January it had dismantled Hamas’ military infrastructure.
On Tuesday, Israeli officials said three of their soldiers were killed in fighting in Rafah, and Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on an Israeli infantry unit in the city that it said killed and wounded 15 soldiers with explosives.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have razed entire neighborhoods in northern and southern Gaza, in what critics see as a systemic push aimed at making the territory uninhabitable. Israel has also knocked out most of Gaza’s hospitals and destroyed dozens of schools and universities in the enclave.
In addition, the American ally imposes a strict blockade on Gaza, bringing it to the brink of famine. Human rights experts have accused Israel of using hunger as a weapon of war.
On Sunday, an Israeli attack on a displaced persons camp in Rafah killed 45 people, including children. A similar Israeli bombardment in southern Gaza claimed the lives of at least 21 Palestinians on Tuesday.
Blinken said Wednesday that images of the carnage from Sunday’s attack hurt on a “fundamental human level.”
“We have been very clear with Israel that the imperative in this case, as in others, is to immediately investigate and determine exactly what happened and why it happened – and whether accountability is necessary, to make sure there is accountability,” America’s top diplomat said.
Blinken’s U.S. State Department approved the transfer of billions of dollars in weapons to Israel during the war, which killed more than 36,000 Palestinians.
