The White House pushed on Sunday for a humanitarian pause to the Gaza war and stressed the importance of protecting Palestinian civilians, even as it underscored Israel’s right to eliminate Hamas’s terror threat.
“It is important for Israel to distinguish between going after terrorist targets, to take out terrorists who continue to threaten Israel, and going after civilians,” US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation.
The interview was one of a number of conversations Sullivan had with major US media outlets, as President Joe Biden reached out to regional leaders, including Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two leaders held their eighth conversation Sunday since the start of the war on October 7.
“The president underscored the need to immediately and significantly increase the flow of humanitarian assistance to meet the needs of civilians in Gaza,” the White House said after the Netanyahu-Biden call.
“The president reiterated that Israel has every right and responsibility to defend its citizens from terrorism and underscored the need to do so in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law that prioritizes the protection of civilians,” the White House said.
In his conversation with Sisi, “The two leaders committed to the significant acceleration and increase of assistance flowing into Gaza beginning today and then continuously.”
Biden made those calls as the IDF expanded its ground war and Hamas claimed that the death toll among the 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has passed the 8,000 mark.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters in Nepal that “the situation in Gaza is growing more desperate by the hour. I regret that, instead of a critically needed humanitarian pause supported by the international community, Israel has intensified its military operations.”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron, who have both visited Israel in solidarity trips, discussed with each other the lack of humanitarian aid to Gaza and the risks of the Gaza war spreading.
Israel has closed its crossings into Gaza and has allowed only a minimal amount of humanitarian supplies to enter the Strip through Egypt. Electricity and clean water are scarce, in part because diesel fuel needed to ensure those two utilities has been diverted by Hamas to supply its rocket-launching infrastructure.
With supplies of food, water, and medicines running low, thousands of Gaza residents broke into UN warehouses and distribution centers to get food.
Ceasefire would benefit the terror group
Sullivan in his interviews stressed that the US was asking hard questions of Israel in all areas. Israel’s core military strategy objective was “making sure that Hamas can never again threaten Israel in the way it threatened Israel before,” Sullivan told CBS.
The US is looking to understand whether the objectives of that military operation are consistent with those goals, he stated.
“How are the means matched to the objectives? And how will this evolve over time? That’s a conversation we’ve been having, and which we will continue to have in the days ahead,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan also said Netanyahu has a responsibility to “rein in” extremist settlers in the West Bank. “It is totally unacceptable to have extremist settler violence against innocent people in the West Bank,” he said.
He stressed that Biden was working to secure the release of the hostages as well as to ensure that Americans in Gaza would be able to leave.
The White House said Netanyahu and Biden on Sunday “discussed ongoing efforts to locate and secure the release of hostages, to include American citizens who remain unaccounted for and may be held by Hamas.”
Sullivan told CBS the Biden administration was in “regular contact” with US citizens in Gaza, sometimes on a daily basis, and was working to get them out.” Biden “has no higher priority than their safe passage out,” Sullivan stated.
He blamed Hamas for preventing their exit, explaining that Israel and Egypt had approved their departure through the Rafah crossing.
Sullivan also spoke about the push to prevent a larger regional war that could include the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah and Tehran itself. He warned Iran the US would respond if its troops were attacked.
“We are vigilant, because we are seeing elevated threats against our forces throughout the region, and an elevated risk of this conflict spreading to other parts of the region. We are doing everything in our power to deter and prevent that,” Sullivan said.