In yet another instance of “virtue signaling,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised the matter of what Gaza’s future should be after Israel’s war is over. “There are different ideas out there about what could follow, but all of that needs to be worked and it’s something that needs to be worked even as Israel is dealing with the current threat,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday.
Times of Israel notes that this appears to be the first time that Washington is publicly urging Israel to think about its “day after” strategy, after Biden and other administration officials have privately been pressing Netanyahu and his aides to come up with one, in order to avoid making the same mistakes as the U.S. made after 9/11, which led to it being bogged down in Mideast wars for years. (Are we supposed to believe that Washington has actually learned something from the disasters it has perpetrated over the last 22 years?)
“We can’t go back to the status quo. They can’t go back to the status quo, with Hamas being in a position in terms of its governance of Gaza to repeat what it did.… At the same time, what I’ve heard from the Israelis—is absolutely no intent, no desire to be running Gaza themselves,” Blinken said when asked what Israel’s strategy is for who will govern Gaza after the war is over. “So, something needs to be found that ensures that Hamas can’t do this again, but that also doesn’t revert to Israeli governance of Gaza, which they do not want and do not intend to do.”
Consulting with the people of Gaza as to what kind of future they want, however, is clearly not on either the Israeli agenda or on Blinken’s.
