Protecting Palestinian Rights: Gaza's Land Should Remain Palestinian

The secretary has made very clear on a number of occasions that there must be no forced resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza, that Gaza is Palestinian land and should remain so, and we will continue to make that clear to the governor of Israel, and we expect them to make that clear as well

Good afternoon. Happy New Year to everyone. Hope you all had an at least somewhat restful period. Uh, Matt, you want to start us off. You have nothing, nothing but a, I have a little echo. I have an echo but nothing.

Nothing to start with. There is a bit of an twice as nice today. Uh, All right. Well, let's just start with the developments in, uh, yesterday in Beirut and today in, in Iran and whether that, uh or what you think of that and how those two uh developments and uh whether that is in line with your wish to prevent the conflict from spreading.

Let me take them in order number one with respect to the development yesterday. I will say that uh AI was a brutal terrorist who was centrally responsible for the attacks of October 7th as well as other attacks against innocent civilians leading back to well before October 7th with respect to the explosions in Iran today.

What I'll say, we have been following the reports rather closely. We don't have any independent information to offer on them. We do express our sympathies to the victims and their loved ones . Who died in this horrific explosion. Uh, As I said, it's too early, at least, for us to be able to say what might have caused it.

But I do want to address some of the irresponsible claims that I have seen circulate and say that, number one, the United States was not involved in any way and any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous. And number two, we have no reason to believe that Israel was involved in this explosion . Why not ? We just do not have any information to believe that that's the case . Did someone suggest that they were ? I mean , other than the , we have seen the multiple accusations related to both supposed fictional United States involvement and as I said , we have no reason to believe Israel . What about on , on I don't have an assessment to make about who is responsible for that incident . I'll leave it to the government of Israel to speak to their actions . OK . But so more broadly though , are you concerned at all that either or both of these are going to , you know , turn this into the regional confrontation , regional conflict that you had been publicly saying you wanted to avoid , we remain incredibly concerned as we have been from the outset of this conflict about the risk of the conflict spreading into other fronts , both inside Israel , whether it be in the North or whether it be uh uh uh in the West Bank or outside of Israel uh in other , other countries in the region , which is why you've seen the secretary engage in intensive diplomacy to try to urge all the relevant parties not to escalate the conflict and other countries and other groups in the region not to escalate as well . I wouldn't say that our concern is any higher today than it has been from the beginning . It's been something that we've been intensely focused on . Just , I guess it's the obvious question . You said it's ridiculous to say that Israel the US were behind the Iran blast . What who could be behind it ? I mean , presumably you're not going to review here isis would be the obvious suspect . I mean , there are suspicions of other parties if you don't think it's,

I just don't have an assessment to offer . It's it's too early and we don't have any independent information that I can offer from this podium at this time . I mean , a bit what was said in terms of what this means for the region more broadly , having these , having these attacks . I mean , is there is there concern about the larger , about larger tensions raising , rising and what would be the message to the Lebanese government to clear but also to Iran in terms of how to respond to these . So the message will be the same message that we have been delivering . Really ,

Department of State Daily Press Briefing - January 3, 2024.