Top US official says Gaza war could last months
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has affirmed the United States’ continued support for Israel in its war against Hamas, playing down differences over the way the war is being fought, and agreeing with Israeli officials that it would continue for “months”.
Speaking during a visit to Tel Aviv yesterday, Sullivan said he discussed the timeline of the war and the importance of averting civilian casualties in his conversations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials.
But he said he had not come to tell Israel what to do, and called suggestions that the Biden Administration was pressuring Israel to transition to a lower-intensity form of warfare a “misunderstanding”.
His comments came a day after Biden Administration officials said they wanted Israel to scale back its military offensive within weeks, to focus on more targeted operations aimed at Hamas.
Days earlier, Biden had issued his toughest criticisms of Israel yet, warning that Israel was at risk of losing international support because of what he called the “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza.
But it was always intended that the war would take place in phases, transitioning eventually from high-intensity bombing to rooting out Hamas leaders on the ground, Sullivan said.
He couldn’t say how much longer it would take for the transition to take place, but agreed that the war would last several more months.
“There’s no contradiction between saying the fighting is going to take months and also saying that the different phases will take place at different times over those months, including the transition from high-intensity operations to more targeted operations,” he said.
Sullivan indicated that he may have been more critical in his private conversations with Israeli officials, saying it was important to keep the discussions behind
closed doors to achieve “convergence”.
US officials have repeatedly said they prefer to conduct any criticisms of Israel behind closed doors, to retain leverage over the Israeli government. But Sullivan gave no indication that the US was attempting to exert any pressure on Israel to curtail bombardments or shorten the war.
The Biden Administration believed Israel was trying to minimise civilian casualties, he said, but he had told Israeli officials the US would like to “see the results match up to that”.
At least 18,700 Palestinians have been killed since the war erupted on October 7 in response to a Hamas assault on Israel that killed 1200 people.
But ultimately, Sullivan said, the blame lay with Hamas, for its role in the attacks that triggered the war and for fighting among the civilian population, placing “an incredible burden” on Israeli military forces.
Sullivan later traveled to Ramallah in the West Bank to meet with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, on the second day of a trip to the region that began in Saudi Arabia, where he met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss ways to create a sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
His visit came amid continued heavy fighting in Gaza, where a prominent Al Jazeera reporter was among those injured in an air strike.
Wael al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera Arabic’s chief correspondent in Gaza, was hit by shrapnel in the shoulder during a drone strike on a school in the southern city of Khan Younis, the network said. His cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa, was also injured.
Dahdouh hit headlines around the world in October when he was shown receiving the news live on air that his wife, son, daughter and grandson had been killed in an Israeli air strike.