As of: March 25, 2024, 11:04 a.m
Comments
Press
Split
Gallant visits Washington amid strained relations between Israel and the US.
The situation in Gaza requires much more humanitarian aid from Western states.
Washington DC - Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant travels to Washington on Sunday (March 24) as relations with his country's key military supporter and ally become increasingly strained.
Israel continues to defy US calls to reduce suffering in Gaza.
He will meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and other senior officials, the Israeli government said in a statement.
The USA also recently criticized Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip
Gallant's visit, which the Israeli government said came at Austin's invitation, came after Blinken criticized the Israeli leadership on Friday for the conduct of the war in Israel.
On his trip to Tel Aviv, the top US diplomat urged Israel not to invade the crowded city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where nearly 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are seeking refuge.
He warned that “this risks further isolating Israel in the world and endangering its long-term security.”
Another Israeli delegation, including Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi, will also travel to Washington on Sunday, an Israeli official told The Washington
Post
.
Read The Washington Post for free for four weeks
Your quality ticket from washingtonpost.com: Get exclusive research and 200+ stories free for four weeks.
Kamala Harris criticized Israel and the plan to invade Rafah
The visit was requested by President Joe Biden so that officials could "hear U.S. concerns about Israel's current Rafah planning and present an alternative approach," Sullivan told reporters last week.
On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris said on
ABC
's "This Week" that any military operation in Rafah "would be a huge mistake," adding that the Biden administration has made that point clear "in multiple conversations and in every way." .
Israel had proposed moving displaced families in Rafah to “humanitarian islands” in other parts of the enclave.
Harris said she studied the maps and "there's nowhere for these people to go."
Asked whether there would be "consequences" from the United States for an Israeli operation in Rafah, she replied: "I'm not ruling anything out."
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a joint press conference with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin after their bilateral meeting on December 18, 2023 (symbolic image).
© Chad Mcneeley/Imago
My news
The wave of bankruptcies continues: cult beverage manufacturer is insolvent
On Princess Victoria's name day: Prince Oscar steals the show
Skoda's novelty with a combustion engine impresses fans - read “It's sustainable”.
Motorcyclist from Munich has to return on foot - and takes out anger on construction yard employees
Sad background: WDR presenter says goodbye after 16 years of reading
Deutsche Bahn announces drastic changes to regional trains
Netanyahu continues to justify action against Hamas: “We will achieve total victory”
Addressing the nation late Sunday on the Jewish holiday of Purim, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “It is impossible to defeat the sheer evil of Hamas
by
leaving it intact in Rafah.
… We will enter Rafah and achieve total victory.”
Heavy fighting continued in other parts of the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday.
The Israel Defense Forces and Israel's Shin Bet military intelligence service launched an operation in the al-Amal neighborhood of Khan Younis, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement.
The operation included airstrikes on about 40 targets, including military facilities and underground tunnels, the statement said.
In a statement, the IDF said its troops would encircle the area and continue the advance into Gaza.
Israeli forces also operated in the north of Khan Younis, in the al-Qarara area, the IDF reported.
They killed militants with tanks and carried out airstrikes on facilities used by Hamas as weapons depots.
The
Washington Post
could not independently verify the reports.
Israeli troops besiege hospital in Gaza - “constant gunfire” in front of the hospital
Fighting was also reported near health facilities in Khan Younis.
The Palestinian Red Crescent, an international aid group, said on Sunday that Israeli forces were "besieging" al-Amal hospital.
According to the organization, Israeli forces used bulldozers and smoke bombs around the hospital and used drones to ask all inmates to evacuate.
The PRCS had previously said that one of its volunteers had been killed by Israeli fire “at dawn”;
Before his death, the volunteer reported “intense and constant shelling” around the facility as well as “constant gunfire,” the group said.
Although there are currently around 1.5 million people in the city, attacks on Rafah continue to occur.
© Mohammed Abed/AFP
The
Washington Post
could not independently verify this information.
An IDF statement said it was not currently operating in hospitals in the al-Amal area and called on Hamas to stop using hospitals and other civilian infrastructure as shields.
The Gaza Strip Health Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Israel also continues to search Al-Shifa Hospital – minimal medical care in Gaza
In Gaza City, Israel said the raid on Al-Shifa Hospital continued on Sunday.
The military operation, which has been ongoing for nearly a week, has alarmed health authorities worldwide and led to increasingly desperate pleas from patients and displaced residents trapped in the medical complex.
After an Israeli attack on Al-Shifa Hospital, once the largest and best-equipped hospital in the Gaza Strip, medical care was only recently reduced to a minimum again, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The Israeli military said its forces arrested 480 suspects in the latest raid and seized "weapons" and cash supplies from the hospital.
This is what you should know – The current situation in the Gaza Strip
More than a dozen Democratic senators are calling on the Biden administration to reject Israel's claim that it is not violating international law by restricting humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
Israel assured last week that the use of U.S.-supplied weapons in Gaza did not violate international or American law.
The Foreign Ministry is currently assessing whether Israeli assurances are “credible and reliable.”
No UN food convoys in northern Gaza
Israel has told the United Nations that it will no longer authorize United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) food convoys to the north, UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said.
“This is outrageous and makes it a deliberate obstruction of life-saving aid during a man-made famine,” he wrote on X. Israel has denied restricting aid to Gaza.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the decision amounted to "denying starving people the opportunity to survive" and called for it to be reversed "urgently" as the enclave faces imminent famine .
UN Secretary General continues to call for ceasefire between Hamas and Israel
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres reiterated calls for a ceasefire during a visit to the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza on Saturday.
“I want the Palestinians in Gaza to know: you are not alone,” Guterres told reporters.
On Friday, Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-backed resolution at the U.N. Security Council calling for an "immediate and permanent ceasefire" in the Gaza Strip.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters, at least 32,226 people have been killed and 74,518 injured in Gaza since the war began.
Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack on October 7, and says 252 soldiers have died since the military operation began in Gaza.
Lior Soroka and Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
To the authors
Sarah Dadouch
is the Washington Post's Middle East correspondent in Beirut.
She previously worked as a Reuters correspondent in Beirut, Riyadh and Istanbul.
Rachel Pannett
joined The Post's foreign desk in 2021 after working for more than a decade at The Wall Street Journal, where she was deputy bureau chief for Australia and New Zealand.
Annabelle Timsit
is a breaking news reporter based in The Washington Post's London headquarters, covering news from the United States and around the world in the early morning hours from Washington.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on March 24, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.