Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will meet with Israel\u2019s minister of defence on Tuesday and discuss ways to defeat Hamas other than conducting a ground invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, the Pentagon said, at a time of rising tensions between the two countries. Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, told reporters Monday that Austin\u2019s planned morning meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is still on, even though Israel abruptly cancelled the visit of a high-level delegation to Washington this week.<\/p>\n
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled the visit in protest over Monday\u2019s UN Security Council decision calling for an immediate cease-fire. The US abstained, deciding not to use its veto power, and the resolution passed 14-0. \u201cThere are ways to go about addressing the threat of Hamas, while also taking into account civilian safety. A lot of those are from lessons, our own lessons, conducting operations in urban environments,\u201d Ryder said. \u201cI would expect the conversations to cover those kinds of things.\u201d Israel says it cannot defeat Hamas without going into Rafah, where it says the group has four battalions composed of thousands of fighters.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s offensive has killed over 32,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and driven a third of Gaza\u2019s population to the brink of starvation. It was launched in response to Hamas\u2019 October 7 attack on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people. Hamas-led militants also took around 250 people hostage. They are still holding around 100 hostages, and the remains of around 30 others, after most of the rest were freed during a cease-fire last year in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners. The United Nations Security Council resolution calls for a cease-fire during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu accused the US of \u201cretreating\u201d from a \u201cprincipled position\u201d by allowing the vote to pass without conditioning the cease-fire on the release of hostages. The dispute signals an erosion in the US-Israel relationship that has been under a microscope for months as the military assault on Hamas continues, escalating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the US was disappointed in the decision to cancel the delegation\u2019s visit this week.<\/p>\n
He said the talks with Gallant would likely include some of what the US had planned to discuss with the Israeli delegation on the possible Rafah invasion. The White House was aiming to talk to the Israelis about possible alternatives to a ground invasion of Rafah. Gallant met Monday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Kirby said those meetings, however, had not been intended as a replacement for the delegation meetings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will meet with Israel\u2019s minister of defence on Tuesday and discuss ways to defeat Hamas other\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":34830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[1629,1450,1380,1530,493,1418,3293,1647,5053,536,9538,2128,775,532],"class_list":["post-34829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-relations","tag-ceasefire","tag-civilians","tag-gaza","tag-hostages","tag-humanitarian-crisis","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-israeli-defence-minister-yoav-gallant","tag-israeli-pm-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-negotiations","tag-palestine","tag-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-austin","tag-tensions","tag-unsc","tag-us-israel-relations"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}