US urges Israel to scale down Gaza offensive
The United States told Israel on Wednesday to scale down its war on Hamas in the "near future," with President Joe Biden urging it to take more care to save civilian lives in Gaza. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made the push during talks in Tel Aviv with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials, discussing the war Israel launched after the October 7 attacks. Washington has strongly backed Israel, but mounting civilian casualties in the Palestinian territory have caused a growing rift between the close allies. "I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives - not stop going after Hamas, but be more careful," Biden told reporters after an event at a medical research center near Washington. The White House said earlier that Sullivan, Biden's top national security aide, had pushed Israel on the timing of the war after Israel's defense minister told him that the conflict would last several more months. Sullivan "did talk about possible transitioning from what we would call high-intensity operations, which is what we're seeing them do now, to lower-intensity operations sometime in the near future," spokesman John Kirby said. "But I don't want to put a timestamp on it." Kirby said that Washington was "not dictating terms" to Israel but that Sullivan had asked "hard questions" about the course of the offensive, while still backing the country. The White House later said Sullivan had discussed "setting conditions for shifts over time from high-intensity clearing operations to lower-intensity surgical operations against Hamas remnants." Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had warned Sullivan that Israel's fight with Hamas "will require a period of time -- it will last more than several months, but we will win and we will destroy them." A senior US official refused to discuss in detail a timeline after US media reported Washington had urged Israel to end the first phase by the end of the year. Sullivan on Friday will head to the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Ramallah for talks with Palestinian Authority leaders, the official said. (AFP)