By Simon Lewis and Ari Rabinovitch
TEL AVIV (Reuters) – U.S. top diplomat Antony Blinken on Friday said Israel must protect civilians in its bombardment of Gaza, as he returned for more talks with Israel’s leaders as its armed forces press a ground offensive in the Hamas-controlled strip.
Blinken is in the region for the second time in less than a month as Washington has sought to balance support for Israel over the deadly Oct. 7 attacks from Palestinian Hamas militants with efforts to reduce the toll of the war on civilians.
Ahead of a meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Blinken reiterated that Israel has a right to “do everything possible to ensure that this Oct. 7 (attack) can never happen again.”
“At the same time let’s just make clear, how Israel does this matters,” he said. “It is very important when comes to protection of civilians who are caught in the crossfire of Hamas’s making, that everything be done to protect them and to bring assistance to those who so desperately need it, who are not in any way responsible for what happened on Oct. 7.”
Herzog said Israel was going to great lengths to notify residents of airstrikes, holding up one of the pamphlets that he said Israel has dropped telling civilians to leave north Gaza.
Families of some of the more than 240 people taken hostage by Hamas gathered outside the military complex in Tel Aviv where Blinken was meeting with Israel’s leaders. They called for there to be no ceasefire until Hamas releases all hostages.
Washington has dismissed calls from Arab and several other nations for a full ceasefire, but wants more temporary and localized pauses in fighting to allow aid to get into the besieged Gaza strip and hostages out.
Blinken also met Netanyahu for almost an hour before both met with members of Israel’s emergency cabinet formed in the wake of the attacks.
Israel says Hamas killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 240 hostages in the attacks on Oct. 7, the deadliest day of its 75-year history.
Gaza health authorities say at least 9,061 people – many of them women and children – have been killed since Israel started its assault on the enclave of 2.3 million people in retaliation.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Ari Rabinovich; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
