Arab leaders press Blinken for Gaza ceasefire hours after school air strike report
Antony Blinken on Saturday to secure an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, hours after Palestinians said an Israeli air strike killed at least 15 people in a U.N.-run school being used as a shelter.
In a rare open display of disagreement, the top U.S. diplomat pushed back as he stood next to his Jordanian and Egyptian counterparts at a news conference, saying a ceasefire would only let Hamas regroup and launch more attacks on Israel.
Blinken met the Saudi, Qatari, Emirati, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers in Amman four weeks after Hamas fighters burst over the border into Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 240 people hostage.
Israel has since struck Gaza from the air, imposed a siege and launched a ground assault, stirring global alarm at humanitarian conditions in the enclave and, Gaza health officials said on Saturday, killing more than 9,488 Palestinians.
«Right now we have to make sure that this war stops,» Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told the news conference.
Blinken said all were agreed on the need for peace and that the current status quo in Gaza cold not hold, but he acknowledged there were differences between Washington, which has called only for pauses to led aid into Gaza, and its allies.
«A ceasefire now would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct.
7,» said Blinken, on his second trip to the region since Israel and Hamas went to war. «No nation, none of us would accept that.»
Earlier on Saturday, Palestinian witnesses said Israel hit Al-Fakhoura school in Jabalia, where thousands of evacuees were living, in the morning.
The Israeli military said that according to a preliminary inquiry it had not targeted the location «but the explosion
