US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has described Hamas's attack on Israel as “the worst” since the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
“But there’s a big difference. That was a conventional war between countries, between armies. This, a massive terrorist attack on Israeli civilians – indiscriminate firing of rockets against civilians.”
He further warned Hezbollah and the West Bank of taking advantage of the situation.
In his remarks on Sunday to CNN, Blinken stated “President Biden reached out to Prime Minister Netanyahu, and spoke to him on the phone early yesterday. I spoke to Israeli President Herzog, to the Foreign Minister Eli Cohen. We’ve been on the phones throughout our government over the last 24 hours, engaging everyone in the region and well beyond” to make sure every country is using every effort “to prevent this from escalating.”
Blinken added that the US administration is looking into a military assistance request by Israel. “Let me not get ahead of it, but again, we’re – we want to make sure that – President Biden’s direction was to make sure that we’re providing Israel everything it needs at this moment to deal with the attacks from Hamas. And as I said, I would expect that there’ll be more on that later today.”
“Well, our first focus is to make sure that Israel has what it needs to deal with the situation in Gaza, to deal with some thousand militants who came into Israel – again, attacking Israeli civilians in their homes, in their towns.”
“At the same time, President Biden was very clear in sending a message to anyone in any other area who might try to take advantage of the situation not to. And whether that’s in the north with Hizballah and Lebanon, whether it’s in the West Bank.”
Commenting on whether Iran directed this attack, he responded: “There’s a long relationship between Iran and Hamas. In fact, Hamas wouldn’t be around in the way that it is without the support that it’s received from Iran over the years. In this specific instance, we have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack.”
He defended the prisoner swap deal saying that the 6$ billion released “can only be used for things like food, medicine, medical equipment.”
Blinken insisted that the Biden Administration achieved successes that diminished hostilities in the Middle East. “And we’ve been very engaged in pursuing, for example, normalization between Israel and its neighbors... And other conflicts, like the conflict in Yemen.”
“At the same time, we have been intensely focused on tensions between Israelis and Palestinians... And that, unfortunately, does not include Hamas because it’s a terrorist organization.”
Blinken went on to say: “so there’s – there are really two paths for the region. One is a path of much greater integration, much greater stability, and a resolution of the challenges between Israelis and Palestinians, including equal measures of democracy, of opportunity, of justice, and dignity for both Israelis and Palestinians.”
