US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called out countries on Wednesday for not demanding that Hamas surrender its arms.
“What is striking to me is that even as, again, we hear many countries urging the end to this conflict, which we would all like to see, I hear virtually no one saying – demanding of Hamas that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender. This is over tomorrow if Hamas does that. This would have been over a month ago, six weeks ago, if Hamas had done that,” Blinken said during a news briefing at the State Department.
“How can it be that there are no demands made of the aggressor and only demands made of the victim,” he said.
The secretary of state noted that “understandably, everyone would like to see this conflict end as quickly as possible,” but, he observed, “if it ends with Hamas remaining in place and having the capacity and the stated intent to repeat October 7th again and again and again, that’s not in the interests of Israel, it’s not in the interests of the region, it’s not in the interests of the world.”
Asked about the growing death toll in Gaza, Blinken reiterated calls for the fighting to “move to a lower-intensity phase.”
“We expect to see and want to see a shift to more targeted operations with a smaller number of forces that’s really focused in on dealing with the leadership of Hamas, the tunnel network, and a few other critical things,” he said. “And as that happens, I think you’ll see, as well, the harm done to civilians also decrease significantly.”
Blinken’s comments come as the UN Security Council continues to negotiate a resolution calling for a suspension in fighting and encouraging more humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, and as the United States’ support for the motion remains unresolved.
CNN’s Becky Anderson, Michael Williams, Kevin Liptak and Jennifer Deaton contributed to this report.
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