US threatens to block more arms sales if Israeli assault on Rafah goes ahead
Antony Blinken highlighted the ‘horrible loss of life of innocent civilians’, in some of the strongest criticism of Israel from the US to date
The US may block more weapons systems to
Israel if it goes ahead with a ground offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has said.
The US has already suspended the shipment of 3,500 2,000lb (907kg) and 500lb (227kg) high-payload bombs following concerns over the scale of civilian casualties in Israel’s war in the territory.
In some of the Biden administration’s strongest public criticism yet of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, Blinken highlighted the “horrible loss of life of innocent civilians”. The secretary of state added that he was concerned that any further ground captured by Israel would create a vacuum “that’s likely to be filled by chaos, by anarchy, and ultimately by
Hamas again”.
Blinken’s remarks suggest Washington will not back down in the face of Israeli defiance over its plan to force
the evacuation of Rafah, but it is an open question whether the US’s increasingly hardening tone will be enough to deter the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Speaking to NBC and CBS News, Blinken said the US president, Joe Biden, remained determined to help Israel defend itself, adding that the high-payload bombs were the only US weapons package currently being withheld. But that could change, he warned, if Israel launched a full-scale attack on Rafah.
Biden has made clear to Israel that if it “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. “We have real concerns about the way they’re used.”
Blinken also echoed the findings of a new US report that said Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in Gaza
likely violated international humanitarian law, but that wartime conditions prevented American officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes.
“When it comes to the use of weapons, concerns about incidents where given the totality of the damage that’s been done to children, women, men, it was reasonable to assess that, in certain instances, Israel acted in ways that are not consistent with international humanitarian law,” Blinken said.
Israel needed, he said, to “have a clear, credible plan to protect civilians, which we haven’t seen”. He warned that Hamas was already seeing a resurgence due to the lack of a coherent, durable plan for
Gaza. “We’ve been working for many, many weeks on developing credible plans for security, for governance, for rebuilding,” he said. “We haven’t seen that come from Israel.”
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, also warned that with more than 1 million civilians crowded in Rafah, “you would have really significant civilian casualties … Many Hamas folks would melt away because they are terrorists.” The president did not want to see US weapons used in that kind of operation, he said.
There was further condemnation of a Rafah offensive from elsewhere, as the UN human rights high commissioner, Volker Türk, said it would breach international law.
“I can see no way that the latest evacuation orders, much less a full assault, in an area with an extremely dense presence of civilians, can be reconciled with the binding requirements of international humanitarian law and with the two sets of binding provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/a...nning-arms-exports-to-israel-would-help-hamas