The Israeli military intensified its attacks on northern Gaza on Monday, battling a regrouped Hamas in areas it said it had cleared and renewing questions over Israeli strategy in the war as the United States issued some of its harshest public criticism yet.
Israel has insisted that it must invade Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where more than 1 million people had sought refuge, in order to accomplish its core objective of “eliminating” Hamas’ presence in the enclave after months of fighting further north.
But Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Sunday that even a full-scale ground assault on Rafah would fail to achieve that goal.
Israel is “on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” he said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“Even if it goes in and takes heavy action in Rafah, there will still be thousands of armed Hamas left,” Blinken said, noting that “we’ve seen, in areas that Israel has cleared in the north, even in Khan Younis, Hamas coming back.”
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