Hamas government: 3 Palestinian journalists were killed in Israeli raids on Gaza

Hours after the end of the truce in Gaza and the return of the Israeli war on the Strip, a White House spokesman announced that the United States continues to work with Israel, Egypt, and Qatar to extend the humanitarian truce, and that US President Joe Biden will remain deeply involved in the efforts aimed at extending the truce and releasing the hostages. The spokesman added that Hamas did not provide a list of the names of the hostages that would allow the truce to be extended.

In the same context, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said (Friday) that he met with officials from Arab countries and discussed the future of the Gaza Strip in light of Israel’s resumption of its attack after the end of a week-long truce with Hamas.

Blinken said that Friday’s talks focused on the current situation in Gaza and how to achieve “permanent and secure peace,” before boarding his plane in Dubai at the conclusion of his third visit to the region since the Hamas attack on October 7th. Blinken said after meeting with a number of his Arab counterparts on the sidelines of the climate conference (COP28): “Our focus remains focused on returning everyone to their homes, returning the hostages, which is what I also worked for today.”

A senior US State Department official said that Blinken met with the foreign ministers of Qatar, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain, in addition to representatives of the Palestinian Authority, on the sidelines of the COP28 conference in Dubai.

The Biden administration is trying to achieve a very fragile balance between showing support for Israel and giving it the green light to resume military operations, and concern about moral responsibility for the possibility of thousands of civilian deaths.

As Israeli military operations began to resume, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged that Israel would fight until the end, and that nothing would prevent it from eliminating Hamas. Benny Gantz told senior officials in the US administration that Israel will expand the fighting throughout the Strip without there being borders to prevent it, which means that the battles may take months.

Analysts call Biden’s strategy towards Israel “hug the bear” or “neutralize the beast,” referring to the administration’s attempt to distance itself from the repercussions of Israel’s scorched earth tactics and to pressure Tel Aviv to act in accordance with international humanitarian law and the laws of war.

American warnings

These Israeli statements about the battles moving to southern Gaza have raised the ire of the US administration, which fears an increase in death tolls if Israel does not adhere to “surgical” military plans, as the Americans call them. The Biden administration has set some standards and requirements; It gave a green light for military operations, but with caveats related to avoiding a large number of civilian deaths, avoiding targeting hospitals and United Nations facilities, and setting a specific time frame for military operations and a comprehensive vision for the aftermath of the war.

The Biden administration sent public warnings to Israel that the destruction that occurred and the huge numbers of civilian deaths in the northern Gaza Strip must not be repeated again. In his press conference in Tel Aviv, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stressed the need to avoid massive loss of civilian lives and avoid population displacement of the size that occurred in northern Gaza, and that he received approval from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take steps to protect civilians.

The US administration is concerned about the possibility of declaring another truce with about 137 hostages still being held by Hamas, including 11 foreigners and 126 Israelis.

Features of the next stage

Analysts say that the war is likely to continue until Israel achieves its strategic goal of destroying Hamas, and the second phase of the resumption of fighting may be more ferocious and violent to avoid a long war in which international pressure increases on Israel to end the fighting and declare a permanent ceasefire.

Frank Lowenstein, who served as a special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under US President Barack Obama during the 2014 war between Israel and Gaza, told CNN that it is not clear whether Israel will heed US advice to avoid civilian casualties, and it will be The scale of the Israeli response to American advice is a very strong indicator of the extent of the influence that the Biden administration has on the Israelis.

He added, “If Israel follows the same military approach in the south as it did in the north, this could lead to an increasingly open dispute with the Biden administration; Therefore, perhaps the Israelis will try to avoid a clash with the American administration and take some steps to moderate their approach to fighting during the next phase of the war.”

Proposals and options

Biden administration officials are discussing with their Israeli counterparts how to protect civilians who fled to the south, and among the options offered is to transfer civilians who were displaced to the south and return them to the north of the Strip again, once the military operations there end. UNRWA estimates the number of those who have been displaced from their homes in the northern Gaza Strip since October 7 at approximately 1.8 million people. That is, more than 80 percent of the population of Gaza.

The US administration is studying the idea of ​​establishing safe zones and safe corridors in the south, but the idea faces difficulties in implementation as hundreds of thousands of civilians are concentrated in a very small area. It is also studying the idea of ​​allocating safe places for Palestinian civilians to gather, and preserving vital infrastructure.