U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said, “The Secretary will discuss efforts to reach an immediate ceasefire agreement that secures the release of all remaining hostages, intensified international efforts to increase humanitarian assistance to Gaza, and coordination on post-conflict planning for Gaza, including ensuring Hamas can no longer govern or repeat the attacks of October 7.”
With 100% of the Gaza population needing humanitarian assistance and extreme food shortages in parts of the Gaza strip exceeding famine levels the situation in Gaza is beyond desperate.
This will be Secretary Blinken’s sixth trip to the Middle East since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7. He plans to hold talks with Saudi leaders in Jeddah on Wednesday before travelling to Cairo on Thursday for talks with Egyptian authorities.
Meanwhile, on Monday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced that, “President Biden asked the Prime Minister to send a senior interagency team… to Washington in the coming days to hear U.S. concerns about Israel’s current Rafah planning and to lay out an alternative approach that would target key Hamas elements in Rafah and secure the Egypt/Gaza border without a major ground invasion.”
Sullivan added that, “Our position is that Hamas should not be allowed a safe haven in Rafah or anywhere else, but a major ground operation there would be a mistake. It would lead to more innocent civilian deaths, worsen the already dire humanitarian crisis, deepen the anarchy in Gaza and further isolate Israel internationally. More importantly, the key goals Israel wants to achieve in Rafah can be done by other means.”
According to Laura Rozen in The Diplomatic, “Sullivan offered a scathing assessment of the Israeli government’s failure to produce a plan for basic order and humanitarian needs after it has militarily cleared Hamas from much of the strip, leading to a power vacuum in which Hamas is coming back in some areas, and in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are facing famine.”
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