Israeli defense chief to visit Washington as Gaza tensions rise
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant headed to Washington on Sunday at a time of increasingly strained relations with his country’s main military backer and ally, as Israel continues to defy U.S. calls to reduce the suffering in Gaza.
He is set to meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and other senior officials, the Israeli government said in a statement.
Gallant’s visit, which the Israeli government said was at Austin’s invitation, comes after Blinken and Israeli leaders confronted one another Friday over the trajectory of the war. On a trip to Tel Aviv, the top U.S. diplomat called on Israel not to invade the crowded city of Rafah in southern Gaza, where nearly 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, warning “it risks further isolating Israel around the world and jeopardizing its long-term security.”
A separate Israeli delegation including Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and the head of the National Security Council, Tzachi Hanegbi, will also leave for Washington on Sunday, an Israeli official told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the schedule has not been made public.
The visit was requested by President Joe Biden so officials could “hear U.S. concerns about Israel’s current Rafah planning and to lay out an alternative approach,” Sullivan told reporters last week.
On Sunday, Vice President Harris said on ABC’s This Week any military operation in Rafah “would be a huge mistake,” adding the administration had made that point clear “in multiple conversations and in every way.”
Israel has proposed moving displaced families in Rafah to “humanitarian islands” in other parts of the enclave. Harris said she had studied the maps and “there is nowhere for those people to go.” Asked whether there would be “consequences” from the United States for an Israeli operation in Rafah, she said, “I am ruling out nothing.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the nation late Sunday on the Jewish holiday of Purim, said: “It is impossible to defeat the sheer evil [of Hamas] by leaving it intact in Rafah. … We will enter Rafah and achieve total victory.”
Meanwhile, heavy fighting continued in other parts of southern Gaza on Sunday. The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet, Israel’s military intelligence agency, launched an operation in the al-Amal neighborhood in Khan Younis, the IDF said in a statement. The operation involved airstrikes on about 40 targets, including military compounds and underground tunnels, the statement said.