The White House has stated that President Joe Biden and his administration would not impose conditions on counterparts in Israel as U.S. officials call on their ally to transition to a lower-intensity phase of the ongoing war in the Hamas-led Gaza Strip.
"We're not dictating terms to the Israelis," National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby told reporters during a press call Friday.
The comments came a day after White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wartime cabinet to discuss the course of the ongoing conflict as international pressure mounted over rising civilian casualties.
Kirby said that U.S. officials have communicated with Israeli officials "about what they're thinking in terms of transitioning from high intensity to what we would consider lower intensity military operations."
"We agree with the Israelis that this this conflict could go on for months," Kirby said. "But what Jake talked to them about is the importance of thinking about transitioning to a different phase here, where the operations are more targeted and more precise, more surgical really in scope and scale."
He added: "What that looks like on the calendar and how that transition is made is really going to be up to our Israeli counterparts to decide and to speak to."
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has set out to destroy Hamas and rescue hostages seized by the armed Palestinian movement after it conducted an unprecedented October 7 surprise attack against Israel. The ensuing war in Gaza has become by far the deadliest-ever flare-up in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israeli officials estimate around 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed in the initial stages of the assault led by Hamas and other Palestinian factions. Officials in Gaza put the Palestinian death toll at more than 18,400, the majority of whom are said to be women and children. The IDF counts 450 dead among its ranks since October 7.
A growing chorus of voices across the international community, including within the United Nations, has called for a ceasefire in response to rising Palestinian casualties. The U.S. has also repeatedly called on Israel to do more to protect civilians, with Biden himself warning last Saturday that Israel risked losing global support, though he emphasized that U.S. backing for its longstanding ally remained solid.
Following his meeting with Sullivan on Thursday, Netanyahu said he greatly appreciated "the U.S. support for Israel in the supply of munitions for the IDF, in blocking the attempts at the U.N. to stop the fighting and in the assistance in returning our hostages."
"I would like to clarify: The return of our hostages is a main goal. We are not relenting in our efforts even for a moment, even at this moment," Netanyahu said in a video statement. "I told our American friends: Our heroic soldiers have not fallen in vain. Out of the deep pain of their having fallen, we are more determined than ever to continue fighting until Hamas is eliminated—until absolute victory."
In his press call with reporters on Friday, Kirby also touched upon the IDF's acknowledgement that it had accidentally killed three Israeli hostages who were "mistakenly killed by IDF troops" in an operation in Shujaya.
Calling the news "heartbreaking" and "tragic," Kirby said he believed that "the Israelis will certainly take a look at this and I'm sure they will do the forensics and to try to figure out how they got how this happened, it's certainly the way we would approach a situation like this to want to know as many answers as we could."
News of the hostages' deaths came amid reports that same day that Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa had been killed in an Israeli airstrike at the Farhana School in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. The IDF has repeatedly accused Hamas of embedding fighters and military equipment in protected civilian sites, an accusation the group denies.
Kirby offered his condolences to another Al Jazeera reporter on Friday's call, but said U.S. officials did not have any indications that [Israeli forces] are deliberately targeting journalists," though he did not "know all the details of this particular strike."
Hamas also expressed its condolences and condemned the report of Abudaqa's death, accusing the IDF of deliberately going after journalists and other civilians, with full support from the U.S.
"The Zionist madness, supported by the Biden administration, takes barbaric revenge on a daily basis against our people in the Gaza Strip, and commits horrific crimes against defenseless civilians in shelter centers and UNRWA schools that house thousands of displaced people," Hamas said in a statement, "the latest of which is its barbaric bombing of the Farhana School in Khan Younis."
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Based in his hometown of Staten Island, New York City, Tom O'Connor is an award-winning Senior Writer of Foreign Policy ... Read more
