TEL
AVIV — US President Joe Biden and his top aides have engaged in an increasingly
awkward dance in recent days, prodding Israel to change its tactics in the war
in the Gaza Strip while still offering it robust public support.
اضافة اعلان
Biden
said last week that Israel was losing international support because of its
“indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, a much more critical assessment than his
earlier public statements urging greater care to protect civilians.
On
Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in his second visit to Israel since
October 7, sought to take the temperature down a few degrees.
Meeting
with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant,
and other top Israeli officials, Austin discussed in detail how Israeli forces
will transition to the next phase of the war, a shift US officials believe will
lower the risk to civilians.
Austin
is a retired four-star head of the Pentagon’s Central Command, overseeing US
military operations in the Middle East, and his word carries weight with
Israel’s leaders, many of whom, like Gallant, are also former army generals.
Speaking
to reporters after daylong meetings, Austin called US support for Israel
“unshakable” and endorsed its campaign to destroy the ability of Hamas, which
controls Gaza, to wage military operations in the difficult urban terrain. But
he also repeated a message he has increasingly made of late: Israel will be
left less secure if its combat operations turn more Palestinians into Hamas
supporters.
“Israel
has every right to defend itself,” he said, standing alongside Gallant. “As I
have said, protecting the Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral duty
and a strategic imperative.”
Austin’s
visit was part of a full-court press by the Biden administration to urge
Israeli officials to wrap up the “high-intensity” phase of the war and begin
carrying out more targeted, intelligence-driven missions to find and kill Hamas
leaders, destroy the tunnels used by the resistance group and rescue the people
taken hostage on Oct. 7.
While
US officials have not publicly discussed a timetable, privately they say that
Biden wants Israel to switch to more precise tactics in about three weeks.
Asked
Monday about the timeline of Israel’s campaign — a subject of intense
discussions among US officials in recent days — Austin demurred. “This is
Israel’s operation, and I am not here to dictate timelines or terms,” he said.
But
Gallant indicated that Israeli officials were taking American concerns
seriously: As the Israeli military achieves its objectives in different parts
of Gaza, he said, it may be able to allow Palestinians to begin returning to
their homes. The vast majority of the population in Gaza has been forced from
their homes.
Austin
seemed to lean into that response, as if to bridge a divide, noting that every
major military campaign has phases.
“The
most difficult part is, as you shift from one phase to the next, making sure
that you have everything accounted for and you get it right,” the defense
secretary said. “That requires detailed planning and very thoughtful planning.”
Austin
acknowledged how complicated the battle space is in southern Gaza for Israeli soldiers.
As they have in northern Gaza, he said, Hamas fighters have used human shields
as protection and operated out of mosques, hospitals, and schools.
But
that is all the more reason, Austin told Israeli occupation commanders in their
closed meetings, that they must be as precise and disciplined as possible as
they dismantle Hamas and its infrastructure, a senior Pentagon official said,
speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal talks.
Austin
is deeply familiar with the painful lessons the U.S. armed forces learned in
the past two decades as they moved from major ground wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan to more targeted operations, and he said he had shared those
lessons with Israeli officials. “We also have some great thoughts about how to
transition from high-intensity operations to lower intensity and more surgical
operations,” he said.
Austin
has had help walking the Israelis through the details. He was joined in his
meetings Monday by Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chair of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. And the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla,
met with senior Israeli officers last Friday, the Pentagon’s Central Command
said.
U.S.
officials acknowledged that however encouraging Gallant’s suggestion that
Israel was near the point of moving to a lower-intensity phase in northern
Gaza, the road ahead was still very difficult.
As
Austin walked to his motorcade Monday evening to fly on to his next stop on his
Mideast trip, he shook hands again with Gallant and offered a
soldier-to-soldier salute: “Keep your head down, Mr. Minister.”
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