The Israeli military has been charged to do more in protecting Palestinian civilians even as the United States ruled out the belief that genocide is being carried out in the Gaza war.
President Joe Biden’s top national security official said Monday amid stalled ceasefire calls and Israel’s continued pounding of the Southern city of Rafah.
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan insisted that the responsibility for peace lay with the militant Hamas group.
“We believe Israel can and must do more to ensure the protection and wellbeing of innocent civilians. We do not believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide,” Sullivan told a briefing.
The Advisor stressed that the United States was “using the internationally accepted term for genocide, which includes a focus on intent” before arriving at this assessment.
He added that while Biden wanted to see Hamas defeated, the US President realised that Palestinian civilians were in “hell”.
Biden has come under fire from Republicans for halting some weapons shipments to press his demands that Israel hold off a Rafah offensive, while there have been protests at US universities against his support for Israel.
Sullivan added that the US president believed any military operation in Rafah by the Israeli military must be tied to a strategic endgame that also answered the question, ‘What comes next?’”
He said this would prevent Israel from “getting mired in a counterinsurgency campaign that never ends, and ultimately saps Israel’s strength and vitality.”
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