Blinken: Hamas regrouping, losses offset by new recruits

Washington believes that Hamas has “recruited almost as many new” terrorists as it has lost in the ongoing war, Blinken said.

By World Israel News Staff

Outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Israel would not be able to maintain its military achievements in Gaza without supporting a new governing body for the Strip, claiming that the Hamas terror group has recruited enough new terrorists to replace nearly all of its operatives killed during the war.

In a two-hour-long speech at the Atlantic Council on Tuesday, Blinken said that the Biden Administration had pushed Israel to embrace a postwar vision for Gaza that included alternative leadership, including the Palestinian Authority.

Blinken charged that Israel’s hesitancy to promote new governance in the coastal enclave had created a power vacuum, which served Hamas’s interests.

“Each time Israel completes its military operations and pulls back, Hamas militants regroup and reemerge because there’s nothing else to fill the void,” Blinken said.

“Indeed, we assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost,” he added. “That is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war.”

While Blinken touched on Hamas’s crimes against its own people, pointing to a Wall Street Journal interview in which Yahya Sinwar called the deaths of Gazans “necessary sacrifices,” the diplomat turned his attention to slamming Israel’s policies in Judea and Samaria.

“Israelis must abandon the myth that they can carry out de facto annexation [of Judea and Samaria] without cost and consequence to Israel’s democracy, to its standing and to its security,” Blinken said.

“Israel is expanding official settlements and nationalizing land at a faster clip than any time in the last decade, while turning a blind eye to unprecedented growth in illegal outposts. Violent attacks by extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians have reached record levels,” he claimed.

Blinken concluded his remarks by alleging that there is a lack of sufficient media coverage in Israel about the humanitarian crisis in the Strip, drawing a moral equivalency to the widespread celebration in the Islamic world of the October 7 massacre.

“Throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, large majorities believe that October 7 didn’t happen — or if it did, that it was a legitimate attack on Israel’s military,” Blinken said.

“In Israel, there is almost no reporting on the conditions in Gaza and what people there endure every day,” he said. “This dehumanization is one of the greatest tragedies of the conflict.”