US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that it’s “clear that Israel cannot occupy Gaza,” but “there may be a need for some transition period at the end of the conflict” between Israel and Hamas.
The top US diplomat’s mention of a “transition period” came in response to comments from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who earlier this week said Israel will have the “overall security responsibility” in Gaza for an “indefinite period” after the war with Hamas ends.
Blinken said he heard from Israeli officials that “they have no intent to reoccupy Gaza and retain control of Gaza.”
In an implicit rebuttal to Netanyahu’s comments, Blinken explicitly laid out the United States terms for “durable peace and security” in Gaza after the war, stressing that its territory must not be reduced or occupied.
“It is imperative that Palestinian people be central to the governance in Gaza, and in the West Bank as well, and that again, we don’t see a reoccupation,” Blinken said at a news conference following the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Tokyo.
“As we’ve said before, we need to see and get to, in effect, unity of governance when it comes to Gaza and the West Bank, and ultimately to a Palestinian state,” Blinken said.
“The deadliest month for journalists”
At least 39 journalists have now been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Wednesday.
The war has brought about the “deadliest month for journalists” since CPJ says it began gathering data in 1992.
Among those, CPJ said that 34 were Palestinian, four Israeli, and one Lebanese. A further eight journalists have been injured and three are missing, according to CPJ.
The most recent to die, on Tuesday, were Yahya Abu Manih, “a journalist with Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa radio channel,” who was reportedly killed in an airstrike in Gaza, and Mohamed Abu Hassira, a journalist for WAFA, the Palestinian news agency, who was also reportedly killed in an airstrike.
Death Toll
Gaza death toll: About 74% of the 10,515 people killed in Gaza since October 7 are children, women, and the elderly, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah said in a report Wednesday, drawing from sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. It’s unclear how many combatants are included in the total. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder has defended the accuracy of the death toll numbers being reported out of Gaza, saying the organization’s numbers closely align with that of the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in the enclave.
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