Austin Joins List of U.S. Officials Visiting Israel as Biden Administration Advocates for Strategy Shift from Netanyahu
As the latest administration official to travel to Israel in a growing spat between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Joe Biden over the increasing number of civilian deaths in Gaza, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is in the country on Monday to obtain a more comprehensive assessment from Israeli officials on their military operations.
Both locally and internationally, Biden is coming under growing pressure to dissuade Netanyahu from the intense shelling of Gaza, which has provoked protests around the world and calls for an ongoing truce.
According to a story earlier this month, US officials anticipated that Israel could switch to a less aggressive, hyper-localized strategy by January that targets only particular Hamas commanders and militants. Austin wants to hear “a very clear articulation of their self-assessment” on Monday, according to a senior defense official who stated on Sunday that Israel’s security establishment is evaluating the circumstances required to advance to the next phase of the fight “on an hourly if not daily basis.”
According to the official, Austin will obtain information on how the Israel Defense Forces, the War Cabinet, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are evaluating the present stage of the war in Gaza. He will also get a sense of the criteria they are employing to go on to the next stage.
Gen. CQ Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will also be in Israel, joining Austin for “meetings with senior Israeli officials,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said last week.
Austin’s conversations will focus on “the assessment of the campaign to date, specific operational milestones that need to be achieved,” the defense official said, adding that “we would expect any partner to be planning for what comes next.”
Austin’s travel follows national security advisor Jake Sullivan’s trip to Tel Aviv, and it was made only a few days after Biden made direct comments urging Israel to take more action to save Gaza’s civilian population.
According to Sullivan, Israel will be moving into a new phase of the conflict “that is focused in more precise ways” to take out the Hamas leadership on Friday. Sullivan stated that Israel “tries to distinguish” between targets that would kill Hamas and targets that would cause civilian casualties in response to a query.
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“What we have consistently said is that Israel has the intent to make sure that it is drawing those distinctions clearly and sustainably,” Sullivan said. “And we want to see the results match up to that.”
About 18,800 Palestinians have died in Gaza since October 7, with 70% of them being women and children, according to a statement released on Sunday by the Palestinian Ministry of Health. These numbers are unable to be verified. The ministry based its figures on information obtained from hospitals in the Hamas-controlled region of Gaza.
