Blinken Meets Arab Ministers in Bid to Calm Outrage Over Gaza Airstrikes

AMMAN, Jordan — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with outraged Arab leaders on Saturday in an effort to limit the spread of the Gaza war and to tamp down a crescendo of anger over civilian casualties, as the United Nations condemned an Israeli bombing of a convoy of ambulances as “horrific,” adding that “nowhere is safe” in the territory.

The depth of feeling among the Arab nations was evident in a news conference in Amman on Saturday evening where Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, bluntly told Blinken, “Stop this madness.” The Egyptian foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, called for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza without conditions.

Blinken responded by reiterating the U.S. position, saying Israel had a right to defend itself and needed to take steps to minimize civilian casualties, but he warned that “a cease-fire now would simply leave Hamas in place and able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7.” As Israel wages the war, he added, “how it does it matters — Israel must take every step to avoid civilian casualties.”

Blinken, who is on a tour of the Middle East, has led diplomatic efforts to unblock assistance for Gaza civilians trapped and desperate after nearly a month of war. He has also been the leading voice of the Biden administration in urging a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting to get aid safely into Gaza.

But the secretary’s trip, which comes as the world processes images of the mass devastation from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, has been met with setbacks. On Friday, Blinken’s call for a pause in fighting was almost immediately rebuffed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said there would be no cease-fire of any kind until there was a release of all of the more than 240 hostages held by Hamas, the governing body in Gaza, which seized them during its brazen terrorist attack on Oct. 7 that killed 1,400 Israelis and others.

Underscoring the growing global outrage over the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the government of Turkey — where Blinken is scheduled to travel next — said Saturday that it was recalling its ambassador to Israel for consultation. In a statement, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said that the ambassador, Sakir Ozkan Torunlar, was summoned “in view of the unfolding humanitarian tragedy in Gaza caused by the continuing attacks by Israel against civilians” as well as because of Israel’s refusal to accept a cease-fire.

Blinken’s trip has highlighted the bind that the United States finds itself in, squeezed between the international fury over the Palestinian civilian death toll and its unwavering support of Israel.

“The real question, looking at the president’s preternatural support for Israel and the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7,” said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. diplomat dealing with the Middle East, “is whether, in the face of rising Palestinian deaths and destruction in Gaza, and outrage from Democrats within his own party, the president would ever pick up the phone and say to Netanyahu: Enough.”

Israel has staunchly defended its bombing of putative civilian targets, saying that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, locating its command centers and other military assets under schools, hospitals and mosques.

Blinken met Saturday with Lebanon’s prime minister in Amman, Jordan, the State Department said. He was also holding talks with the foreign ministers of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, as well as Palestinian representatives, Jordan’s Foreign Ministry said. Those countries have been among the most forceful in their condemnation of Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli airstrikes continued to pound Gaza City hospitals and shelters on Saturday, while Israel reiterated its order to civilians to leave northern Gaza as it intensifies ground operations there. One strike landed near the entrance to Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital in the center of the city, killing two people and wounding many others, according to the Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government.

Another strike, on Al Fakhura school in the Jabalia neighborhood, about 3 miles away, killed 15 and wounded 70, the ministry said. The school was being used as a shelter.

After a week when huge Israeli munitions decimated densely populated neighborhoods in Gaza, an Israeli attack on an ambulance convoy Friday drew an unusually sharp rebuke from the United Nations.

“I am horrified by the reported attack in Gaza on an ambulance convoy outside Al-Shifa hospital,” António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, said in a statement late Friday night. “The images of bodies strewn on the street outside the hospital are harrowing.”

But as in previous strikes on civilian targets, Israel defended the strike because the convoy was “being used by a Hamas terrorist cell,” adding in a statement that “a number of Hamas terrorist operatives were killed in the strike,” a claim that could not be verified.

The head of Al-Shifa hospital, Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, said a dozen bystanders had been killed, but that none of the paramedics or patients in the evacuation convoy were killed.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said the convoy consisted of five ambulances, including one of its own. The convoy left Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza on Friday afternoon on its way to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

According to the Red Crescent’s account, the road was blocked by rubble, forcing the ambulances to turn around. The lead vehicle was struck by a missile, but the convoy managed to continue its journey back to the hospital. The convoy was struck again when it arrived at the gates of the Al-Shifa hospital. Fifteen people near the hospital entrance were killed in the strike, according to the Red Crescent, which called the attack a war crime.

Amid the charges and countercharges, the targeting of the ambulances and so many other strikes in recent days have underscored the perils of pursuing a war in a tightly packed strip of land where civilians are intermingled with, and sometimes literally right on top of, Hamas militants.

More than 9,200 Palestinian civilians have been killed since war was triggered by the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, according to the tally by the Gaza health ministry.

The war continues to take a heavy toll on those gathering the news. The Committee to Protect Journalists said that more news media workers have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war than in any other conflict in the area since it started tracking the data in 1992. As of Friday, 36 news workers — 31 Palestinians, four Israelis and one Lebanese — have been killed since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the group said.

Mohammed Abu Hatab, a correspondent for a Palestinian television channel, and 11 members of his family were killed in the city of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on Thursday.

In his statement, Guterres said he had not forgotten “the terror attacks committed in Israel by Hamas and the killing, maiming and abductions, including of women and children.” At the same time, he described a civilian population in Gaza as “besieged, denied aid, killed and bombed out of their homes.”

The United Nations has a clear view of the conditions in Gaza because of its role in running schools and providing aid. Guterres painted a picture of desperation in the territory, with shortages of food, water, medicine and fuel.

“Morgues are overflowing. Shops are empty. The sanitation situation is abysmal,” he wrote. “We are seeing an increase in diseases and respiratory illnesses, especially among children. An entire population is traumatized.”

A week after its ground invasion began, the Israeli military says its troops have encircled and are fighting inside Gaza City, the seat of the Hamas government and the largest population center before the war.

The military said in a statement Saturday that its troops were being attacked by Hamas militants emerging from tunnel shafts, part of the vast underground labyrinth of sleeping quarters, supply depots, meeting rooms and prison cells that Hamas has constructed.

The military released images of tanks firing into the skeletons of concrete buildings in Gaza and military bulldozers plowing through a sandy, rubble-strewn landscape on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

The family home of Hamas’ exiled leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in the Shati refugee camp on the northern edge of Gaza City, was hit Saturday morning by an airstrike, The Associated Press reported, citing the Hamas-run media office in Gaza.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/world/middleeast/blinken-arab-ministers-gaza-airstrikes.html">The New York Times</a>.