US Defense Chief In Israel Pressuring Netanyahu Govt To Scale Back Killing

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is the latest high-ranking US official to visit Israel on Monday, where he’ll get a closer assessment from Israeli counterparts on how Gaza operations are going – but importantly he’s expected to convey a message of restraint as global pressure on both Tel Aviv and Washington intensifies.

Earlier this month he was among the first most visible officials in the Biden administration to issue rare, surprising criticism of Israel, which has long been America’s closest ally in the Middle East. “You know, I learned a thing or two about urban warfare from my time fighting in Iraq and leading the campaign to defeat ISIS,” he said in a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California. “The lesson is not that you can win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians.” He raised eyebrows by then saying Israel faces a “strategic defeat” if it doesn’t reduce civilian casualties in Gaza. 

Pool/CNN

“The center of gravity is the civilian population and if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat,” Austin said. “We will continue to press Israel to protect civilians and to ensure the robust flow of humanitarian aid.”

Some Republican hawks had seized on the comments, suggesting they show that President Biden’s support and commitment to Israel is weak. Soon after the speech Senator Lindsey Graham blasted Austin’s words as “naïve” and said “I’ve just lost all confidence in this guy.”

Another indicator of what Austin’s messaging is expected to be was seen last week when national security advisor Jake Sullivan while in Israel said the IDF needs to wrap of the current “high intensity” phase of its offensive “within weeks”. 

Sullivan reportedly went so far as to express that the US desires for this phase to stop by year’s end, which is only two weeks away. “A second Israeli official says the US has pushed for the current phase to wrap up by the end of 2023,” according to the Times of Israel. The US wants a “major roll back” in fighting within that period, an Israeli source was cited as saying.

The US and Israel continue to remain publicly at odds over the “day after” Hamas in Gaza. Both agree that Hamas needs to be eradicated and should never return to rule the Gaza Strip again, but the Biden administration has vocalized it wants to see a future Palestinian Authority (PA) administration in the Strip, while Netanyahu has rejected this.

Meanwhile, following the ‘friendly fire’ incident where Israeli ground forces shot and killed three Israeli hostages who were trying to escape, attempts to jump-start negotiations again are in full swing.

“Mossad chief David Barnea was expected to meet with CIA director Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Warsaw to discuss efforts to reach a new hostage deal with Hamas, according to multiple reports in the Hebrew press Monday,” according to regional media.

The “latest satellite analysis finds that almost 43,000 buildings in Gaza (16% of the total) have been damaged and that at least 450,000 people (20% of the population) are now homeless.” https://t.co/8lnog2PDs6

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) December 17, 2023

Efforts at reviving negotiations with an aim toward freeing more hostages is also being driven by domestic pressure in Israel, with relatives of captives demanding that more be done. Al Jazeera comments as follows: 

The reported meeting between the CIA chief, Qatar’s prime minister and the head of the Mossad comes due to “a lot of the Israeli public pressure as well as American pressure”, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara says.

“The United States would want to see a movement on the aspect of the captives, maybe before Christmas,” he said, adding that CIA Director Bill Burns’s involvement added “new weight” to the situation.

“The Americans don’t want to leave it to the Israelis because they apparently don’t trust the [Benjamin] Netanyahu government with changing direction,” Bishara said.

Indeed this seems the consistent message coming from the Biden White House over the course of the past week, also as the death toll in Gaza soars. Palestinian sources have said over 19,000 mostly civilians have been killed.

“Close to 20,000 Palestinians have been killed, with 70% of them women and children, according to the territory’s health officials,” writes NBC. “The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are displaced, and an estimated half face starvation, according to human rights advocates and aid groups.”