At the same time as the evacuation order, the Israel Defense Forces announce that they are fighting Hamas inside Gaza City. Numerous thousands of people are evacuating along the route, according to Salma Abdelaziz of News of the World
AP/WASHINGTON — As a step toward Palestinian statehood, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Wednesday for a unified, Palestinian-led government to rule Gaza and the West Bank after the war. This vision exacerbates U.S. disagreements with ally Israel about what the Palestinian territories should look like after Israel's military campaign against Hamas concludes.
Blinken's summary of American perspectives on what should happen to Gaza after the war acts as a counterbalance to the post-conflict scenarios put forth by representatives of Israel's hard-right government and its allies. The United States' concerns seem to have increased after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that the Israeli military would probably keep security control over Gaza for a "indefinite period."
Blinken told reporters in Japan that any postwar governance structure for Gaza "must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority."
He was in Tokyo with other high-ranking diplomats from the Group of Seven major industrial democracies to discuss Hamas's attacks on Israel on October 7 and to find ways to lessen the suffering of the 2.3 million Palestinians who are ensnared in Gaza by Israel's military offensive and blockade, which has been going on for a month.
Blinken reaffirmed the Biden administration's opposition to both a plan to force Gaza's Palestinian citizens into neighboring Egypt and any return of long-term Israeli direct control over the Gaza Strip, as presented in a policy report by Israel's intelligence ministry.
Blinken declared, "We are very clear that there will be no reoccupation, just as we are very clear that there will be no Palestinian population displacement." And as we've previously stated, in order to achieve a Palestinian state in the end, we must see and achieve unity of governance over Gaza and the West Bank.
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