U.S. messaging shifts amid rising Gaza death toll
Biden in call with Israel PM emphasized “the need to protect Palestinian civilians and to reduce civilian harm to the maximum extent possible,” NSC spokesman John Kirby said.
The White House appeared to be shifting its public messaging to reveal more private U.S. pressure and disagreements in its discussions with Israeli officials amid a growing international and domestic outcry about Palestinian casualties in Israel’s war in Gaza and following the latest visits by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA Director William Burns to the region.
The latest White House public messaging stresses U.S. diplomacy to try to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza, indirect negotiations to try to secure the release of the estimated over 200 hostages held by Hamas, and U.S. advocacy for temporary pauses in the Israeli military campaign in order to distribute the aid, and enable safer movement of civilians in the territory.
But it also highlights gaps between the American and Israeli positions that have mostly been kept private until now regarding Israel’s conduct of the war and humanitarian protections for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
It urged that the Israelis “reduce civilian harm to the maximum extent possible” in their war to try to eradicate Hamas, a White House official said today.
Palestinian and United Nations officials in the Hamas-run enclave say over 10,000 people have been killed, including over 4,000 children, in the four weeks since a Hamas massacre on Oct. 7 killed over 1,400 Israelis, and Israel subsequently launched a military campaign vowing to destroy the Palestinian terrorist group. “Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said today (Nov. 6), pleading for a humanitarian ceasefire.
President Biden, in a phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, discussed “continued efforts to get the hostages released; [and] continued efforts to continue to get humanitarian aid… in,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told journalists in a virtual gaggle today.
“The President reiterated his steadfast support for Israel and the protection of Israeli citizens from Hamas,… while also…emphasizing the need to protect Palestinian civilians and to reduce civilian harm to the maximum extent possible,” Kirby said.
Biden and Netanyahu also discussed “the potential for tactical pauses to help enable civilians to reach safer locations, to ensure assistance is reaching civilians in need, and to enable potential hostage releases,” he continued.
“We would like to see humanitarian pauses put into place as appropriate as soon as possible,” Kirby said.
The official White House readout of the call issued shortly after Kirby’s briefing stuck to almost the exact same script and order of topics, in which U.S. support for Israel slipped to number three, while several other points suggested U.S. pressure for moderation of Israel’s conduct of the war and for greater humanitarian protections. It also said Biden “discussed the situation in the West Bank and the need to hold extremist settlers accountable for violent acts.”
The shift in US messaging seems to reveal publicly more distance behind the scenes between the US and Israeli positions including on humanitarian aspects of the war.
Kirby today noted that earlier in the month long campaign, Israel had resisted allowing humanitarian aid to be delivered to Gaza. It had eventually relented under U.S. nudging, although only some 400 trucks of aid have entered Gaza in the last few weeks, when the territory of over 2 million people previously subsisted on some 500 trucks a day.
“You might recall that in the early going here, Israel was very resistant to humanitarian assistance getting in at all,” he said. “And we persisted. We continue to persist and humanitarian aid is getting in. Again, not to the degree we want it to, I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”
“Based on our constant engagement we’ve been able to make a big difference, and there’s no other country outside of the region that’s working harder than the United States to keep that aid going,” he said.
Kirby said he could not confirm the exact Palestinian death toll in Gaza to date. But, he added, “We obviously recognize and have said publicly that many, many thousands have been killed, and many more injured and/or wounded in this conflict,” he continued. “And each and every death is a tragedy; each and every death ought to be prevented to the maximum extent possible. But I can’t verify the specific death toll number coming out of the Ministry of Health. ”
The acknowledgement of a Palestinian death toll in the many thousands, and the emphasizing that every civilian death ought to be prevented to the “maximum extent possible” sharply contrasted with statements by President Biden and Kirby himself a couple weeks ago seemingly casting doubt on the death toll figures provided by the Gazan health authorities because the territory is controlled by Hamas, comments which many Arab and Muslim Americans and others described as hurtful and offensive.
Successful ‘pilot’ to try to secure larger hostage release deal
Separately, a senior U.S. administration official described intense, indirect negotiations to try to secure the release of the over 200 hostages held by Hamas. Mostly notably, he said the release on Oct. 20 of an American mother and daughter held hostage by Hamas was a kind of “pilot” to test that the parties the Qataris, Egyptians and others were talking to could deliver, and that the U.S. considered it successful.
“There is an active process going on here with multiple lines of effort, including indirect engagement, to try to find a framework to get the hostages out of Gaza,” the senior US administration official, speaking not for attribution, said on a call with journalists on Nov. 3.
“The two Americans we were able to get out a couple weeks ago was a bit of a pilot to see if it was possible,” he said. “It is possible.”
“And when you heard the President…the other night talking about a pause in the context of a prisoner release, the release is to get the hostages out,” he continued. “And the numbers that we're talking about, it would take a very significant pause in…the fighting to be able to do this.”
“It is something that is under a very serious and active discussion, but there's no agreement as of yet,” he said. “But it's something we're working on extremely hard. And, again, hopefully, God willing, we'll have some good news on that in a future call. But unfortunately, it’s something we cannot guarantee.”
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