Israel lacks credible plan to protect Palestinian civilians – Blinken

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday said Israel lacked a “credible plan” to protect some 1.4 million Palestinian civilians in Rafah and warned an Israeli attack could create an insurgency by failing to kill all Hamas fighters in the southern Gazan city.

“Israel is on a trajectory potentially to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas fighters left or if it leaves a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” Blinken said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

The alarm bells from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan came after President Joe Biden delivered an ultimatum last week on CNN that an Israeli invasion of Rafah would cause him to pause certain weapons transfers.

Blinken and Sullivan both said Biden made the determination because he didn’t want American weapons used in what he estimates would be a bloody, ill-advised operation.

Blinken said on Sunday that the US believes Israel has killed more civilians than Hamas terrorists as part of its war in Gaza, and that Israel needs to do more to mitigate civilian deaths.

“While Israel has processes, procedures, rules, regulations to try to minimize civilian harm, given the impact that this operation, this war in Gaza has had on the civilian population, those have not been applied consistently and effectively.”