US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will land in Israel on Thursday as the White House continued to warn its enemies that it was ready to act to support the Jewish state.
“I will be working to ensure that they [Israel] are equipped to defend themselves and make sure any hostile parties know they must not seek to take advantage of the situation,” Blinken said before departure.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington on Wednesday, “We are sending a loud and clear message that we are ready to take action” should Israel’s enemies “consider trying to escalate and widen this war.”
He spoke on the fifth day of the Gaza war, dubbed by the IDF Operation Swords of Iron, which began on Saturday when Hamas launched an unprecedented assault on Israel’s southern communities, in which they killed over 1,200 civilians and soldiers and took over 100 people hostage, including Americans.
Concern is high in Washington with US President Joe Biden speaking to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday for the fourth time in five days.
The White House said that the number of dead Americans had risen to 22 and that there were 17 others unaccounted for, but they did not specify if all of the deaths were at Hamas’ hands and or if some of them were actually the result of Israeli counterstrikes in Gaza.
“The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and her strike group are now in the eastern Mediterranean. They are there for deterrence purposes,” Kirby stressed.
“The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier and her strike group will be departing in a pre-scheduled” trip to the European command area and will first head to the Eastern Mediterranean,” where they will be available if needed, he said.
Kirby said that while Iran had clearly supported Hamas and was “broadly complicit: but did not have any direct evidence they were behind the attack.
Lindsey Graham says Iran is responsible, Putin denies
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, however, was quick to point the finger at Iran. In an interview with Fox News, he was “confident” that Tehran’s long hand was involved in carrying out and executing the attack.
He spoke after Hamas said it would execute hostages if Israel targeted Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Graham said that “for every Israeli or American hostage executed by Hamas, we should take down an Iranian oil refinery. The only way we are going to keep this war from escalating is to hold Iran accountable,” he said.
“It is now time to take the war to the Ayatollah’s backyard,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the US of inflaming the Middle East by sending an aircraft carrier group to the region, saying “compromise solutions” were needed and that he hoped common sense would prevail.
The Kremlin chief has called the explosion of violence between Israel and the Palestinians a vivid example of the failure of US policy in the Middle East, which he says has taken no account of the needs of the Palestinians.
Putin, speaking at an energy conference in Moscow, said the US move, which was also fiercely criticized by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday, was a mistake.
“I don’t understand why the US is dragging aircraft carrier groups into the Mediterranean Sea. I don’t really understand the point. Are they going to bomb Lebanon or what?” he said.
“Or have they decided to try to scare someone? There are people there who are no longer afraid of anything. This is not the way to solve the problem. Compromise solutions need to be looked for. Of course, such actions are inflaming the situation.”
Putin, who is locked in a standoff with the West over Ukraine, accused Washington of sidestepping what was an established process for trying to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by unsuccessfully taking matters into its own hands, and without resolving fundamental issues.
“Now, we hear Iran is being accused of all sorts of things, as usual without evidence. Let’s see, hopefully, common sense will prevail,” said Putin.
Tehran said on Tuesday it was not involved in Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Describing the violence in Israel as terrible, the Kremlin chief said the wider conflict could not be resolved without addressing issues such as the creation of a Palestinian state.
Officials hesitant to speculate about intelligence failure
US officials such as Kirby have been loath to speculate as to how Israeli intelligence had failed to predict the Hamas attack.
According to AFP, however, Republican Representative Michael McCaul of Texas who chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs said, “We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen.”
He added, “I don’t want to get too much into classified (details), but a warning was given,” he said, explaining, “I think the question was at what level.”
Israel’s response in Gaza called ‘massacre’
As the fifth day of the war comes to a close, Israeli reprisal strikes on blockaded Gaza have killed 1,100 people and wounded 5,339, Gaza’s Health Ministry said. Some 535 residential buildings had been destroyed leaving around 250,000 homeless, Hamas officials said. Most of the displaced were in UN-designated shelters, others huddling in shattered streets.
Washington said it was talking with Israel and Egypt about safe passage for civilians from Gaza, with food in short supply.
Hussein Al-Sheikh, an official in the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, said the international community must intervene urgently to avert “a major humanitarian catastrophe.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Israel’s bombing of Hamas-controlled Gaza and its decision to halt electricity, fuel, goods, and water.
He called Israel’s response a disproportionate response amounting to a “massacre.”
With Ankara offering to mediate, Erdogan and his foreign minister held calls with regional powers, the United States, and others. However, Israel’s envoy to Ankara has said it is too early to discuss mediation.
Speaking to his ruling AK Party in parliament, Erdogan said even war had a “morality” but the flare-up since the weekend had “very severely” violated that.
“Preventing people meeting their most fundamental needs and bombing housing where civilians live – in short, conducting a conflict using every sort of shameful method – is not a war, it’s a massacre,” he said.
Turkey, which has backed Palestinians in the past and hosted members of Hamas, has been working to mend ties with Israel after years of animosity. Unlike the European Union and the US, Ankara does not consider Hamas a terrorist organization.
Turkey, Jordan invoke two-state solution
While not openly blaming Israel, Turkey has said the fighting is due to years of injustices against Palestinians and that the only path to peace is the formation of a sovereign Palestinian state in a two-state solution.
Jordan’s King Abdullah said on Wednesday no peace was possible in the Middle East without the emergence of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
“Our region will never be secure nor stable without achieving just and comprehensive peace on the basis of the two-state solution,” the monarch said.
King Abdullah has since the start of the latest conflict been engaged in a flurry of diplomatic efforts with Western and regional leaders urging swift action to de-escalate the situation, officials say.
Officials said the monarch, whom US President Joe Biden called, will voice the kingdom’s concerns with Blinken when he arrives in Amman after his trip to Israel.
Reuters contributed to this report. •
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