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President Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, their first name in over a month amid rising tensions over the battle in Gaza.
Nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan described a “business-like” assembly between two leaders with completely different views a couple of proposed army operation on the town of Rafah in southwestern Gaza.
Biden urged Netanyahu to not perform the mission on a metropolis the place greater than one million folks have taken refuge, in accordance with Sullivan.
“They’ve nowhere else to go,” Sullivan advised reporters on the White Home. “Gaza’s different main cities have largely been destroyed and Israel has not introduced us, or the world, with a plan for the way or the place they’d safely transfer these civilians, not to mention feed and home them.”
Sullivan stated the president “did not make threats” however harassed that there’s a higher method to defeat Hamas with out placing 1000’s of civilian lives in danger.
Biden requested Netanyahu to ship a group of army and humanitarian officers to Washington to listen to U.S. issues and focus on an alternate technique. The prime minister agreed.
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Sullivan stated the assembly would give U.S. officers the chance to put out an alternate strategy “that might goal key Hamas parts in Rafah and safe the Egypt Gaza border” with out the necessity for a serious floor invasion.
“From the president’s perspective, we have arrived at a degree the place all sides has been making clear to the opposite its perspective, its view,” Sullivan stated. “And now we actually must get right down to brass tacks and have the prospect for a delegation from all sides on an built-in foundation, everybody sitting across the similar desk, speaking by the way in which ahead.”
Biden has repeatedly expressed help for Israel’s proper to pursue Hamas after the Oct. 7 assault that killed about 1,200 folks in Israel and took about 250 hostages.
However Biden has additionally been utilizing more and more robust language to name on Netanyahu to do extra to guard harmless lives.
Greater than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, with the bulk being ladies and youngsters, in accordance with the Hamas-run well being ministry.
In November, Biden warned that Israel was shedding worldwide help.
“Israel’s safety can relaxation on the US, however proper now it has greater than the US. It has the European Union, it has Europe, it has a lot of the world. … However they’re beginning to lose that help by indiscriminate bombing that takes place,” Biden stated throughout a marketing campaign fundraiser in December.
Sullivan emphasised that time to reporters on Monday on the White Home, calling an invasion of Rafah a mistake.
“It will result in extra harmless civilian deaths, worsen the already dire humanitarian disaster, deepen the anarchy in Gaza, and additional isolate Israel internationally,” Sullivan stated.