Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Hamas has gained as many members as it lost amid Israel’s invasion of Gaza — despite Israeli forces claiming that their relentless slaughter of countless Palestinian civilians over the past 15 months was necessary in order to defeat Hamas.
“We assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost,” Blinken said on Tuesday, in a speech at the Atlantic Council laying out the U.S.’s vision for Gaza after Israel’s assault.
Israeli leaders have long claimed that the primary objective of their incursion into Gaza is to totally defeat and eliminate Hamas. Many experts warned that this is not achievable through military assault, as Hamas was, in fact, created by people opposed to Israel’s occupation of Palestine — and the current catastrophe created by Israel would only drive recruitment.
In practicality, it has been clear to advocates for Palestinian rights and experts that Israel’s goal is not to root out Hamas, but to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza through mass slaughter and the destruction of all infrastructure necessary to sustain life there. This extermination campaign is not just retaliation for the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack, but also in service of many Israeli settlers’ long-term goal of occupying all of Palestine.
Blinken’s remark effectively means that Israel has not made any advancements in its stated mission of defeating Hamas in more than 15 months of the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza. During that time, Israel has killed at least 45,000 Palestinians, including 18,000 children, and reduced the majority of the enclave to rubble. (Experts have noted that the official death toll is likely a vast undercount, as it doesn’t include people who are missing, or who have died due to Israel’s starvation and disease campaign.)
Blinken’s speech comes as Israel and Hamas are reportedly very close to reaching a hostage exchange deal and could announce one in the coming days, with the Trump administration taking over on Monday.
However, in his remarks, Blinken seemed to lay the groundwork for further Israeli occupation and massacres in Gaza, saying that the continued recruitment for Hamas is “a recipe for enduring insurgency and perpetual war.”
Elsewhere in his speech, the secretary of state said that the U.S. has “long made the point to the Israeli government that Hamas cannot be defeated by a military campaign alone.”
But the Biden administration has never once wavered in its military support of Israel, with the State Department granting Israel everything it wanted as Israeli forces have carpet bombed the Gaza Strip and deprived Palestinians there of food, water, and other basic needs.
In fact, U.S. ambassador to Israel Jack Lew said in an interview this week that the U.S.’s policy throughout the genocide has been to avoid any substantial criticism of Israel’s military goals. “Fundamentally, nothing that we ever said was, ‘just stop the war.’” Lew said.
Lew also directly contradicted Blinken’s claim that the U.S. has questioned Israel’s stated goal of destroying Hamas.
“I don’t think you’ve heard the secretary or [President Joe Biden] or [National Security Adviser] Jake Sullivan ever back away from the proposition that Israel had a right and a responsibility to prosecute the war, that eliminating Hamas as a military and a governing force is a shared objective, and that the narrative can’t begin on October 8th,” Lew told Times of Israel.
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