US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said more needs to be done to protect Palestinian civilians on Friday after meeting with top Israeli officials in Tel Aviv.
“We need to do more to protect Palestinian civilians,” he said at a news conference.
In some of his most forceful comments to date, Blinken condemned Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields and embedding its fighters within civilian infrastructure, but said that “civilians should not suffer the consequences for its inhumanity and its brutality.”
“We've been clear that as Israel conducts its campaign to defeat Hamas, how it does so matters — it matters because it's the right and lawful thing to do. It matters because failure to do so plays into the hands of Hamas and other terror groups,” Blinken said, echoing earlier comments that "how Israel does this matters."
“There will be no partners for peace if they're consumed by humanitarian catastrophe and alienated by any perceived indifference to their plight,” he added.
Blinken said that the US believes efforts to get humanitarian assistance in and hostages out “would be facilitated by humanitarian pauses.”
“That was an important area of discussion today with Israeli leaders – how, when and where these can be implemented, what work needs to happen, and what understandings must be reached,” Blinken said.
“A number of legitimate questions were raised in our discussions today, including how to use any period of pause to maximize the full humanitarian assistance, how to connect a pause to the release of hostages, how to ensure that Hamas doesn't use these pauses or arrangements to its own advantage,” Blinken said.
“These are issues that we need to tackle urgently, and we believe they can be solved,” he added.
In a meeting with Blinken today, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that Israel will not agree to a pause in fighting unless it includes the release of hostages, one source directly familiar with the comment told CNN.