President Biden and his top advisers have engaged in an increasingly uncomfortable dance in recent days, pressuring Israel to change its tactics in the war in the Gaza Strip while offering it solid public support.
Biden said last week that Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, a much more critical assessment than his previous public statements urging greater care to protect civilians. On Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, on his second visit to Israel since the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, attempted to lower the temperature by a few degrees.
Meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and other senior Israeli officials, Austin discussed in detail how Israeli forces will transition to the next phase of the war, a change that U.S. officials believe will reduce the risk to civilians.
Austin is a retired four-star chief of the Pentagon’s Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, and his word carries weight among Israel’s leaders, many of whom, like Gallant, are also former Army generals. .
Speaking to reporters after daylong meetings, Austin called U.S. support for Israel “unwavering” and backed its campaign to destroy the ability of Hamas, which controls Gaza, to conduct military operations in the difficult terrain. urban. But he also repeated a message he has repeated more and more lately: Israel will be less secure if its combat operations turn more Palestinians into Hamas supporters.
“Israel has every right to defend itself,” he said, alongside Gallant. “As I have said, protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral duty and a strategic imperative.”
Austin’s visit was part of a pressure campaign by the Biden administration to urge Israeli officials to end 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 militant group and rescue people taken hostage on October 7.
While U.S. officials have not publicly discussed a timetable, they privately say Biden wants Israel to shift to more precise tactics in about three weeks.
Asked Monday about the timeline of Israel’s campaign, a topic of intense discussion 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 could allow Gazans to begin returning to their homes. The vast majority of Gaza’s population has been forced to leave their homes.
Austin seemed to lean toward that answer, as if to bridge a divide, noting that every major military campaign has phases.
“The hardest part is, as you move from one phase to the next, making sure you take everything into account and do it right,” the defense secretary said. “That requires detailed planning and very thoughtful planning.”
Austin acknowledged how complicated the battle space in southern Gaza is for Israeli soldiers. As in northern Gaza, he said, Hamas fighters have used human shields for protection and have operated from mosques, hospitals and schools.
But that’s all the more reason, Austin told Israeli commanders in their closed-door meetings, why they must be as precise and disciplined as possible in dismantling Hamas and its infrastructure, a senior Pentagon official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. discuss internal conversations.
Austin is deeply familiar with the painful lessons the U.S. military has learned over the past two decades as it transitioned 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 interesting ideas about how to transition from high-intensity operations to lower-intensity, more surgical operations,” he said.
Mr. Austin has been helped to explain the details to the Israelis. Their meetings on Monday were joined by Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, met with senior Israeli officials last Friday, the Pentagon’s Central Command said.
U.S. officials acknowledged that, as encouraging as Gallant’s suggestion that Israel was close to moving to a de-escalated phase in northern Gaza, the road ahead was still very difficult.
As Austin walked to his motorcade Monday night to fly to his next stop on his trip to the Middle East, he shook Gallant’s hand again and offered soldier-to-soldier advice: “Keep your head down, Mr. Minister. .”
