The United States on Thursday (Dec 14) said that it wants the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas to “end as soon as possible,” the White House said.
The comments by the White House came amid US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s visit to Israel as the international pressure mounted over Tel Aviv due to a rise in the number of civilian casualties in Gaza more than two months into the Israel-Hamas war.
Sullivan, during his visit to Tel Aviv, discussed Israel moving to “low-intensity operations” against Gaza “in the near future”, White House spokesman John Kirby said.
The top White House official also met Defence Minister Yoav Gallant who told him that the war would last for “more than several months”, according to Gallant’s office.
“Hamas is a terrorist organization that built itself over a decade to fight Israel, and they built infrastructure under the ground and above the ground and it is not easy to destroy them,” his office said in a statement.
“It will require a period of time — it will last more than several months, but we will win and we will destroy them,” it added.
Ahead of his trip, Sullivan told a Wall Street Journal event he would discuss a timetable to end the war and urge Israeli leaders “to move to a different phase from the kind of high-intensity operations that we see today.”
Israel has come under mounting pressure even from its key backer US as President Joe Biden said Tel Aviv’s “indiscriminate” bombing of civilians was costing it international support.
Spain FM urges Israel to distinguish ‘terrorists’ from Gaza civilians
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares on Thursday called on Israel to differentiate between its “terrorist targets” and civilians in Gaza, adding that places of worship, hospitals and UN buildings should be spared.
“Spain’s voice will always be raised to protect the rights of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza,” Albares said on a visit to Morocco.
“We must make a distinction between terrorist targets and the civilian population. We cannot have places of worship, hospitals, United Nations offices as targets,” he said at a joint press conference with his Moroccan counterpart Nasser Bourita.
Albares further setting the record straight about Spain’s backing to Israel in its war against Hamas said that his country had condemned the attacks launched by the Palestinian militant group and that Tel Aviv had the right to defend itself but “this defence against this terrorist attack must be done within the limits of international humanitarian law”.
This comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday reiterated that “nothing could stop” his country from continuing the war until it achieves victory against the Palestinian militant group.
“We will continue until the end. There is no question at all. I say this in light of great pain, but also in light of international pressure. Nothing will stop us. We are going until the end, until victory, nothing less than that,” Netanyahu said in a video statement released by his office.
While talking to the soldiers over the radio, Netanyahu said, “I want you to pass this along to the last of the soldiers – we’re continuing until the end, until victory, until Hamas is annihilated, let there be no doubt about this. This is important, it is a message I want to convey to each and every soldier over there.”
Around 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, lost their lives in the attacks, in which Hamas gunmen also took some 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
(With inputs from agencies)
