White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan reiterated the Biden administration’s pressure on Israel to limit its military operation in Gaza during a visit to the country on Sunday.
Sullivan is on a combined trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, as the US leans on its main Arab ally in the region to calm tempers in the Middle East in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war.
The White House said before Sullivan’s meeting on Sunday that it would urge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to carry out limited operations in Rafah rather than a full-blown invasion as has happened in the rest of Gaza.
More than a million people are believed to be sheltering in Rafah, the last remaining large settlement that has not yet been invaded by Israeli ground forces. Israel bombed the city for months, accelerating concerns of a growing humanitarian crisis.
At least 28 Palestinians were killed on Sunday, Gaza health officials and Hamas said, most of them in an attack on a house in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip.
Biden has taken a hard line on Rafah, promising to suspend military aid to Israel if it invades the city. Despite storming parts of the city, the Biden administration has said current operations have not crossed the line to trigger any weapons suspension.
The pressure comes at a time when the Israeli government is struggling to find a plan for Gaza, with Hamas emerging again in regions previously vacated by the Israeli military. Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz said on Saturday that he will leave the war cabinet if Netanyahu does not create a solid plan to govern Gaza by next month.
The US and Saudi Arabia are also said to be in final negotiations on a security agreement, which Sullivan discussed with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the weekend.
Relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia have deteriorated seriously since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, when the two nations moved closer to a hitherto unprecedented diplomatic normalization agreement.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
