LISTEN: There can never be repeat of October 7 attacks - Blinken

Blinken made these remarks in conversation with Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times on Wednesday.

Fighting has ravaged Gaza since Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attacks on Israel that resulted in the death of about 1,140 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

At least 24,448 Palestinians, about 70 percent of them women, young children and adolescents, have been killed in Israeli bombardments and ground assaults, according to the Gaza health ministry's latest figures.

Blinken said an added problem is a large number of people worldwide do not believe that the October 7 attacks happened.

"They do not believe that Hamas slaughtered women and children, that it executed parents in front of their kids, it executed kids in front of their parents, it burnt families alive. 

"They don't believe it. Everything that followed is even worse. 

"Here's what it comes down to, in my judgment, I think the biggest poison that we face around the world, internally in our societies and externally in our relations with others, is dehumanisation. The inability to see the humanity in the other.”

The United States has backed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's call to eradicate Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, but has called for the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank, gradually to take over control in the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu has long denounced the Palestinian Authority and been sceptical of a Palestinian state.

"For me, I think what we are seeing every single day in Gaza is gut-wrenching. The suffering we are seeing among innocent men, women and children breaks my heart. 

"The question is what needs to be done. We made judgments about how we thought would be most defective in trying to shape this in ways to get more humanitarians to people, to get better protection and minimise civilian casualties," he said.