Antony Blinken on Gaza war

“At the same time, much more needs to be done to protect civilians and to make sure that humanitarian assistance reaches them. Far too many Palestinians have been killed; far too many have suffered these past weeks. And we want to do everything possible to prevent harm to them and to maximize the assistance that gets to them. To that end, we’ll be continuing to discuss with Israel concrete steps that can be taken to advance these objectives. We’ll continue to focus relentlessly on getting our hostages home. We’ll continue to focus on expanding humanitarian assistance that gets into Gaza and reaches people in effective ways. And we’ll continue to focus on the steps that can be taken now to try to start to set the foundation for durable and lasting peace, which, as we’ve said repeatedly and believe, has to include two states for two peoples.”

“This marks the last day of what’s now been a nine-day trip of intensive diplomacy throughout the Middle East and now here in the Indo-Pacific. And along the way and at each stop, in different ways, we’ve sought to advance a number of critical objectives: minimizing harm to Palestinian civilians and maximizing the humanitarian assistance that reaches them; working to prevent the spread of the conflict; focusing on getting hostages home as well as getting American citizens and other foreign nationals out of Gaza; and working to set sustainable, durable conditions for genuinely lasting peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike. To that end, I’ve had conversations starting a week ago with the Israeli Government about steps that can be taken to advance each of these objectives. And among those steps that we talked about more than a week ago were humanitarian pauses. These can advance all of the objectives that I just mentioned. We appreciate the fact that, yesterday, Israel announced four-hour pauses with three-hour notice in specific areas, as well as two humanitarian corridors that will allow people to move more safely and freely to get out of harm’s way and also to access assistance. These steps will save lives and will enable more assistance to get to Palestinians in need.”