Netanyahu ally meeting with US leaders to discuss war in Gaza
Mike Brest
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A top ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be meeting with top U.S. officials in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer will meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, according to the National Security Council.
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The leaders’ meetings will be “consultations on a number of matters related to the conflict in Gaza and the return of hostages held by Hamas,” NSC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
Tuesday’s meetings come as Israel continues its military campaign in Gaza, which has devastated much of the Strip, in spite of repeated requests from U.S. and other Western allies to do more to limit the civilian casualties incurred in the operations. Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, has said roughly 20,000 people have been killed since Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7 sparked the war, though the total does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
The U.S. has, throughout much of the conflict, defended Israel’s right to self-defense, while the White House’s support for Israel in spite of the growing death toll has led to increased criticism both domestically and internationally for the Biden administration. Recently, the Biden administration has sought to get Israel to end its high-intensity operations, instead hoping it would put more emphasis on special forces carrying out more specific and targeted missions against Hamas leaders.
“We can have different discussions on this tactical issue or that tactical issue. We listen very attentively to whatever Washington says, and I believe they listen very carefully to whatever we say to them,” Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Netanyahu, told CNN. “But ultimately, we’re on the same side of this. We want to see Hamas destroyed.”
Netanyahu, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Monday, said Israel has three primary goals for the war: removing Hamas from power in Gaza, demilitarizing the U.S.-designated terrorist group, and the deradicalization of Palestinians.
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“Gaza will have to be deradicalized,” he wrote. “Schools must teach children to cherish life rather than death, and imams must cease to preach for the murder of Jews. Palestinian civil society needs to be transformed so that its people support fighting terrorism rather than funding it.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned Israel last month that if it isn’t more careful with how it carries out the war, it could replace a “tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”