US to push Israel to scale back war
By Eric Schmitt
WASHINGTON – Defence Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III will visit Israel and two Persian Gulf nations this week as Biden administration officials push Israel to end its large-scale ground and air campaign in the Gaza Strip within weeks and transition to a more focused phase in its war against Hamas.
Austin will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, to discuss in detail when and how Israeli forces will carry out a new phase that American officials envision would involve smaller groups of elite forces that would move in and out of population centres in Gaza, conducting more precise, intelligence-driven missions to find and kill Hamas leaders, rescue hostages and destroy tunnels, US officials said.
While the secretary is expected to voice support for Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas’ ability to wage military operations, he will also reinforce the importance of taking civilian safety into account during operations and the critical need to increase the delivery of humanitarian assistance, a senior Pentagon official said.
As a former four-star head of the Pentagon’s Central Command, Austin is deeply familiar with the painful lessons the US armed forces learned in the past two decades as they transitioned from major ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to more targeted operations and wants to share those lessons with Israeli officials, the Pentagon official said on condition of anonymity to discuss internal assessments.
In a sign of the urgency of this moment in the war, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will join Austin in Israel.
Ten weeks after Hamas’ initial attack on Israel, the death toll in the Gaza Strip has climbed to nearly 20,000, according to local health officials, and international rights groups warn the humanitarian crisis there is spiralling even further. And the peril faced by the people kidnapped by Hamas and other armed groups — there are believed to be at least 100 individuals still being held captive — was evident Friday (15), when Israeli forces mistakenly killed three Israeli hostages.
Austin’s visit, his second to Israel since Hamas killed about 1,200 people there Oct. 7, is part of a full-court press by the administration to urge Israel to wrap up the high-intensity part of the war. Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, met with Israeli leaders Thursday (14) about the direction of the conflict. Sullivan did not specify a timetable, but US officials said Biden wants Israel to switch to more precise tactics in about three weeks.
The secretary will also travel to Bahrain, home of the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, largely to discuss freedom of navigation and maritime security in the region. The United States is in discussions with its allies to expand a maritime task force to guard ships traveling through the Red Sea after several recent attacks by Houthi rebels on commercial vessels in what appears to be an escalating extension of Israel’s war with Hamas by Iranian-sponsored proxy forces.
Austin will then visit Qatar, where the Pentagon operates a major command centre at Al Udeid Air Base. Austin will meet with senior Qatari officials who have played an important role in facilitating the release of hostages seized by Hamas fighters on Oct. 7.
Finally, the secretary is expected to visit briefly with the crew of the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford, which was dispatched to the eastern Mediterranean Sea near Israel in the days after the Hamas attack as the first of two US carriers sent to the region to deter Iran and its proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq from widening the war in Gaza.
-New York Times
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