Protecting civilians must be ‘job number one’ for Israel: Blinken

Washington, United States – AFP

Protecting and aiding civilians must be “job number one” for Israel in the war-battered Gaza Strip, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.

“Where there is a will, there is a way,” Blinken told reporters after a virtual meeting with ministers on a new maritime corridor for aid into Gaza.

“We look to the government of Israel to make sure this is a priority. Protecting civilians, getting people the assistance they need, that has to be job number one, even as they do what is necessary to defend the country and to deal with the threat posed by Hamas,” Blinken said.

Blinken spoke with his counterparts from Britain, Cyprus, the European Union, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates on an initiative announced last week for the US military to build a temporary pier in the Mediterranean to bring in aid.

When operational, the pier will bring in up to two million meals a day into the Gaza Strip, where the United Nations has warned of the risk of famine, Blinken said.

“It is a complement to, not a substitute for, other ways of getting humanitarian assistance into Gaza,” Blinken said.

“Overland routes remain the most critical way to get assistance in and then to people who need it, but this will help close the gap,” he said.

But Blinken took a distance from EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, whom he met earlier in the day and who said Tuesday at the United Nations that Israel was using food as a weapon of war.

“Of course the Israelis have been not only allowing food in, they have been working to make sure that it gets in and gets to people who need it,” Blinken said, pointing to Israeli humanitarian decisions made after pressure from the United States.

Blinken said the United States was waiting for more facts before commenting on what the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said was an Israeli strike Wednesday on one of its food distribution centers in Gaza.

Blinken said that Hamas has fired from civilian sites but said, “The Israeli military (and) Israeli government have a responsibility and obligation to do everything possible to ensure that the humanitarians can do their jobs.”

He called again for a truce that would halt fighting for weeks in exchange for the release of Israelis by Hamas.

Israeli attacks since October last year have killed close to 31,300 Palestinians in Gaza and left about 70,000 injured. The people of the enclave, especially those in the north, are facing starvation because of Israeli blockade which is allowing only a small fraction of what is needed to trickle through its checkpoints.