LONDON — Jordan, one of the United States' closest allies in the Middle East, confronted Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday with a stark and unwelcome assessment: Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza.
Blinken was in London after holding meetings in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, during which he pressed the need for a cease-fire and the return of hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza.
"We do see ethnic cleansing taking place" in Gaza, Blinken's Jordanian counterpart, Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, said, speaking to the American delegation in front of journalists. "It has got to stop."
Safadi added that the Israeli government “is not listening to anybody” and the situation in Gaza is “only getting worse.”
The U.S. is Israel's most important ally and its largest supplier of weapons, and it has resisted calls to stop the flow of armaments to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli military has intensified its bombardment of northern Gaza, surrounded hospitals and refugee camps, forced tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee and fueled fears of a targeted starvation campaign.
More than 42,000 people have died in Gaza since Hamas terrorists killed some 1,200 and kidnapped another 250 on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel launched a war in the blockaded Palestinian enclave.
On Monday, Blinken said that the U.S. rejects “any effort to create a siege, to starve people, to hive off northern Gaza,” and that Netanyahu had informed him directly “that is not Israel’s policy.”
“The horror Israel is bringing on the entire population of northern Gaza is inhumane,” Safadi said in a statement on X a few hours after meeting with Blinken. “It is pure evil and a war crime that humanity should not tolerate. This massacre should be faced with a decisive international action to stop it immediately, including through imposing an arms embargo and effective sanctions.”
Journalists killed
Also on Friday, an Israeli airstrike killed three journalists in Lebanon, their networks and local officials said, and Israeli strikes killed 38 people in southern Gaza as Israeli forces detained patients and staff as they besieged and stormed one of the few functioning hospitals in the north, according to local health officials.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attacks, but later said two people had been killed when Hezbollah bombed Majd al-Krum, a Muslim village in the north of the country.
While Hezbollah earlier said it had shot a salvo of missiles at the area, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz linked the deaths directly to the Lebanese militant group's backer, Iran.
"The world must stop Iran now — before it’s too late," he wrote on X.
The deadly strikes came as U.S. and Israeli negotiators prepared to travel to Qatar in the coming days to resume cease-fire talks
Meetings will resume Sunday in Doha, according to a senior administration official, as the U.S. tries to seize an opening to jumpstart negotiations after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. CIA Director William Burns will represent Washington as intelligence chiefs from the U.S., Qatar, Egypt and Israel will gather at a critical moment.
Since Oct. 8, 2023, Hezbollah has been firing rockets and other projectiles into northern Israel, in solidarity with Hamas. For months, as the pair traded tit-for-tat attacks, more than 60,000 people were displaced from their homes in northern Israel, according to government tallies.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attack and an estimated 1.2 million have been displaced, according to Lebanese officials.
‘A war crime’
In Lebanon, the Beirut-based pan-Arab network Al-Mayadeen TV said two of its journalists — camera operator Ghassan Najar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida — were both killed in an Israeli strike that hit a compound housing journalists in the country's southeast in the early hours of Friday morning.
Photos from the scene showed burned-out cars marked “PRESS” covered in rubble.
Broadcaster Al-Manar, which is owned by the Iran-backed militant and political group Hezbollah, said its camera operator Wissam Qassim was also killed in the strike, which took place in the Hasbaya region.
Lebanon's health ministry said another three media workers were also injured in the attack, which the ministry confirmed had killed three, adding to a death toll of more than 2,500 people in the country since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah began last year.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike.
Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary accused Israel of intentionally targeting the journalists in an attack he said amounted to a "war crime."
The deadly strike comes as Israel faces mounting accusations of intentionally targeting journalists in Gaza, which it denies.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 128 journalists have been killed in Gaza during Israel's yearlong offensive there. The committee has warned that more journalists were killed in the first 10 weeks of Israel's offensive in Gaza than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.
Earlier this week, the Israel Defense Forces named six journalists working with Al Jazeera, saying they had been "exposed as Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists."
The network denied the accusations, and CPJ said Israel has “repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence.” In a statement published on social media Friday, it said it “strongly condemns Israel’s killing of three journalists.”
Chaos at Gaza hospital
In Gaza, the health ministry said 38 people had been killed and dozens injured in Israeli strikes on the southern city of Khan Younis. It also said that Israeli forces had "stormed and are present inside" the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia as they continued a deadly assault on the enclave’s north.
The health ministry said hundreds of patients, medical staff and displaced Palestinians who had sought shelter at the hospital amid widespread Israeli strikes in northern Gaza had been detained by Israeli forces.
"The situation inside the hospital is catastrophic in every sense of the word," the health ministry said.
The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News on the strikes in Khan Younis or the situation at the hospital Friday morning. In a statement to NBC News Saturday, COGAT, the Israeli military's liason with Palestinians, said it worked with U.N. agencies to transfer 23 patients by ambulance from Kamal Adwan hospital.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said his organization had lost touch with personnel at the hospital.
"This development is deeply disturbing given the number of patients being served and sheltering there," he said.
Israel has waged a weekslong ramped up offensive in northern Gaza, where the United Nations has warned of a spiraling humanitarian crisis. More than 600 people have been killed in the offensive, according to local health officials.
The IDF said Friday that its forces were continuing their assault on the Jabalia refugee camp, from which thousands of people have fled amid heavy airstrikes. It said its troops were also active in both southern and central Gaza, where Israeli forces launched a deadly strike Thursday on a school in the area of the Nuseirat refugee camp.
The IDF said its forces were targeting Hamas militants operating inside a "command and control center" in the school compound.
Andrea Mitchell and Chantal Da Silva reported from London, Doha Madani reported from New York, and Abigail Williams reported from Washington.
