WASHINGTON — US President Joe Biden asked Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to send a delegation of senior Israeli officials to Washington to hear his administration's proposal for ways to continue the war against Hamas without inflicting further mass harm on civilians in Gaza, the White House said Monday.
US national security advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters that Biden made the offer during a phone call with Netanyahu on Monday — the first call between the two leaders in more than a month — and that Netanyahu accepted.
American officials plan to lay out "a better way" for Israel to target Hamas, short of "a major military operation that puts thousands and thousands of civilian lives at risk" in the city of Rafah, Sullivan explained.
"A major ground operation there would be a mistake. It would lead to more innocent civilian deaths, worsen the already dire humanitarian crisis, deepen the anarchy in Gaza and further isolate Israel internationally. More importantly, the key goals Israel wants to achieve in Rafah can be done by other means," he said.
