US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that an all-out Israeli incursion of Rafah would provoke "anarchy" if it fails to eliminate the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas in the southern Gaza city.
A full-scale invasion, the top US diplomat said, could come "potentially at an incredibly high cost." And, he added, Israel "will be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency."
"Israel's on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas," Blinken told NBC's "Meet the Press."
Hamas fighters, Blinken said, already are returning to areas of northern Gaza that Israel claimed to have cleared.
NBC and CBS News aired interviews with Blinken dominated by President Joe Biden's decision to pause a shipment to Israel of bombs over fears of massive civilian casualties in Rafah and a State Department report that Israel's use of US-supplied arms may have broken international law.
He also confirmed that the hold President Joe Biden has placed on weapons to Israel remained limited to 3,500 "high-capacity" bombs.
Defending the pause on the shipment of 3,500 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs, Blinken said Israel lacked a "credible plan" to protect some 1.4 million civilians sheltering in Rafah
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," said Blinken.
Blinken said the United States was continuing to press Israeli leaders to provide a plan for Gaza once the war is finally over.
Israel needs to "have a clear, credible plan to protect civilians, which we haven't seen," he said.
"We have the same objectives as Israel," he said. "We want to make sure that Hamas cannot govern Gaza again."
Asked whether the US concurred with a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israeli forces had killed more civilians than Hamas fighters since the war began on October 7, Blinken simply replied, "Yes, we do."
More than seven months into the US-Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, the regime continues to kill civilians across the besieged territory.
The regime has carried out fresh attacks in the north, pushing deeper into the Jabalia refugee camp, killing several people there.
In the central parts of the strip, over 60 Palestinians were killed in just 24 hours.
Relentless Israeli bombings also claimed the lives of 18 people in the southern refugee-packed city of Rafah. That’s where Israeli forces are preparing for a large-scale ground aggression, despite international warnings.
Over 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since last October when the US-Israeli genocide began. Most of those killed are women and children. Thousands of bodies also remain under the rubble.
