Israeli officials intend to continue pummeling Hamas’s positions in Gaza, citing the importance of degrading the threat of future attacks in defiance of international calls for an end to the violence.
“I don’t think it’s the time to talk about the calls for a ceasefire,” Israeli Foreign Affairs ministry spokesman Lior Haiat told reporters Wednesday. “There’s nothing really to talk about.”
That show of disinterest in a ceasefire conversation coincided with Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s announcement that he would dispatch the State Department’s top official for Israel and Palestinian Affairs to attempt to broker an end to the dueling rounds of rocket attacks and airstrikes. Some international observers fear that the conflict could be “escalating towards a full-scale war,” as a United Nations official put it Wednesday, but Israeli officials want to damage the militant groups’ ability to target Israel after this round of fighting ends.
“These people of darkness, these Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, have blood on their hands,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday during a visit to a hospital where children injured in the rocket attacks received treatment. “An hour ago, we assassinated senior commanders in Hamas’s headquarters, including the commander of Gaza City and other commanders. This is just the beginning. We will hit them with strikes they have never dreamed of.”
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That’s not what State Department officials want to hear. President Joe Biden’s administration has been attempting to condemn Hamas while lobbying Netanyahu not to worsen the crisis with retaliatory strikes that might prolong or expand the conflict. Blinken sought to reiterate that message in public and private on Wednesday while acknowledging the “very clear and absolute distinction between a terrorist organization, Hamas that is indiscriminately raining down rockets, in fact, targeting civilians” and Israeli operations.
“But whenever we see civilian casualties, and particularly when we see children caught in the crossfire losing their lives, that has a powerful impact,” Blinken told reporters Wednesday. “And I think Israel has an extra burden in trying to do everything it possibly can to avoid civilian casualties, even as it is rightfully responding in defense of its people.”
Israeli officials disclaimed responsibility for civilian casualties, arguing that Hamas is doubly to blame — first, for using “human shields” by positioning military targets in civilian centers, and secondly, due to its own tactical failures when firing rockets at Israel.
“There is an abnormal amount of rockets falling short, and they are landing in populated areas in Gaza,” Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told reporters in the joint briefing with Haiat. “What Hamas is trying to do is to pin the blame on Israel for those civilian casualties that they themselves, and the Islamic Jihad, are causing.”
Palestinian health officials say that 56 people have been killed, including 14 children. Thirty Hamas personnel have been killed, by the Israeli military’s tally, and Conricus “put a large red question mark” on the additional casualty figures, citing Hamas’s influence over the health ministry.
“Hamas is a terrorist organization that is known to lie, manipulate, and falsify,” he said. “So the fact that they say a certain amount of people have been killed, doesn’t, I don’t feel committed by that, and I question anything that Hamas does or says.”
Refugees International put the figures at 48 Palestinians killed. The humanitarian group did not include a breakdown of Hamas fatalities as opposed to civilian adults but did echo the report of 14 children dead.
“The worst violence since the 2014 Gaza war, the situation threatens to spiral into a war that will claim more lives and wreak havoc,” Refugees International President Eric Schwartz said Wednesday. “The renewed violence comes against the backdrop of growing tensions in East Jerusalem around the planned Israeli expulsion of Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. In addition, an Israeli police raid of Al-Aqsa Mosque left hundreds of Palestinians and several Israeli police officers injured.”
Israeli officials attributed the conflict to a power struggle between Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who canceled parliamentary elections that his party was expected to lose to Hamas and then blamed Israel for the cancelation.
“The reason that Hamas started this military operation is an internal political conflict,” said Haiat. “They’re trying to show themselves as the guardians of Jerusalem . … And they are playing a zero-sum game against the Palestinian Authority, trying to undermine the leadership of the Palestinian Authority.”
A senior State Department official is being dispatched to attempt to broker an end to the fighting. “He will urge on my behalf and on behalf of President Biden a de-escalation of violence,” Blinken said. “We’ve been engaged with all parties, including the Palestinians, and that will continue. But the most important thing now is for all sides to cease the violence, to de-escalate, and to try to move to calm.”
Blinken “reiterated his call on all parties to deescalate tensions and bring a halt to the violence” in a phone call with Netanyahu, according to a State Department readout, but Netanyahu and his internal rivals alike have trumpeted their determination to deliver a major blow to Hamas.
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“Our instructions are very clear: to stop the launching of the missiles, the terror attacks on Israeli civilians, and to damage the infrastructure, terror infrastructure, of Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip,” said Haiat, the foreign ministry spokesman. “I’m not sure [the military has yet] reached this goal, and I don’t think it’s the time to talk about the calls for a ceasefire.”
