Blinken arrives in Israel as resumption of Gaza war looms

The visit, Blinken’s third to the region since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, marks the Biden administration’s evolving relationship with top Israeli officials since hostilities began. What began as a “bear hug” strategy of intense support by President Biden has become one in which U.S. officials, facing growing blowback at home and internationally, have distanced themselves from scorched-earth Israeli tactics and pushed for a more targeted battlefield approach.

For now, the U.S. effort includes pushing for an extension of the combat pause that began last week to enable the release of additional hostages held by Hamas. But although Blinken and other American officials in the region, including CIA Director William J. Burns, have advocated a longer pause, the administration continues to support the war’s eventual resumption and Israel’s overarching goal of dismantling Hamas, officials said.

“We’ll be focused on doing what we can to extend the pause so we continue to get more hostages out and more humanitarian assistance in,” Blinken told reporters Wednesday at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, hours before arriving in Israel.

“Clearly,” he added, “that’s something we want, and I believe it’s also something that Israel wants.”

Hamas, the militant organization that has governed Gaza since 2007, has released dozens of Israeli women and children and foreign nationals who were taken captive during last month’s cross-border assault. In exchange, Israel has freed more than twice as many Palestinian prisoners, all women and teenagers. U.S. officials, among others, are eager for the two sides to broaden the focus of their negotiations to encompass the release of hostages who are men and military personnel as well.

But Blinken and his team also intend to put heavy pressure on the Israelis to shift their fighting tactics whenever they resume the war, moving away from large strikes that the Biden administration says have imperiled far too many civilians. That has been a theme of U.S. conversations with Israeli officials for weeks, but it has gained urgency as the Israel Defense Forces prepare to sweep to Gaza’s southern regions, where most of the enclave’s 2 million residents have gathered to escape the fighting that has focused on Gaza City in the north.

U.S. officials fear that if Israel uses the same tactics as it did in the north, the civilian toll will grow even worse.

Israeli leaders have offered mixed messages about their willingness to shift course, with some countering that in confronting an urgent security threat, they can’t take half measures.

“There is tension between, on the one hand, destroying Hamas while, on the other hand, minimizing civilian casualties,” said Jonathan Rynhold, the head of Bar-Ilan University’s Department of Political Studies.

The IDF “will need to be very, very cautious,” said Michael Milshtein, the former chief of Palestinian affairs to Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories and a senior fellow at Reichman University. “It will not be easy.”

Still, he said, the Israeli public supports the government’s effort to fight Hamas, meaning that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unlikely to agree to a full shift in strategy.

“Right now the only condition the Israeli public has put forward to the leadership is that Netanyahu should be serious enough and really consistent about the goal of eradicating Hamas’s political and military capabilities,” he said. “For many Israelis, this is an existential threat. Nothing less than that.”

Blinken will also visit the West Bank during his trip, where he is expected to plan for what he said Wednesday was “both the day after and the day after the day after” the conflict, as Israel, Palestinians and the world contemplate the short- and long-term future of postwar Gaza. Blinken has spoken of his desire for a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority to run both the West Bank and Gaza and, ultimately, for there to be an independent Palestinian state.

Both those aspirations face major headwinds. The Palestinian Authority is largely discredited among Palestinians, who see it as weak and feckless. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is a firm opponent of a two-state solution, and even moderate Israelis are skeptical. And whatever peace emerges will be deeply marked by the fighting that is happening now, making planning even more complicated.

Khalil Shikaki, a political scientist and director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, a polling organization based in Ramallah, said that in thinking about how to shape its broader Israel-Palestinian strategy, the United States must “base its current policy regarding the pursuit of the war and the means to reach the day after on that same design.”

Sudlikovsky reported from Jerusalem. William Booth in London contributed to this report.