By Emma Emeozor with agency reports
President Joe Biden has underscored the need to sustain a continuous flow of urgently needed humanitarian assistance into Gaza in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House has said.
The US leader also updated Netanyahu on US support for Israel and “ongoing efforts at regional deterrence, to include new US military deployments”, the statement said.
The White House also said the president had welcomed the release of two hostages from Gaza and reaffirmed his commitment to securing the release of the remaining hostages as well as safe passage for US citizens and other civilians in Gaza.
The Pentagon is sending military advisers and sophisticated air defense systems to Israel ahead of an anticipated ground assault into Gaza by the Israeli military.
Israel would not allow fuel into Gaza even if all hostages are released, Mark Regev, a senior advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has told CNN.
He said: At the moment we have no interest in more fuel going to the Hamas military machine and we have not authorized fuel, we have authorized medicine, we have authorized water. We’ve authorized foodstuffs, we’ve not authorized anything else.
Asked if Israel would allow fuel to enter Gaza if all hostages were released, Regev said Israel’s position would not change.
The government decision is that fuel doesn’t go in because it will be stolen by Hamas and it’ll be used by them to power rockets that are fired into Israel to kill our people.
Israel will not delay a possible ground invasion of Gaza over concerns for the more than 200 hostages being held there by Hamas, the country’s energy minister has told German tabloid Bild.
Israel Katz, who had previously insisted that not an “electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter” Gaza, until the hostages were freed, told the paper:
We are doing everything we can and working with every interlocutor we can to bring those kidnapped home… But that cannot prevent our other actions, including the ground invasion, if we decide to do it, because that’s what Hamas wants.
Meanwhile, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte was in Israel on Monday, as international leaders continued diplomacy aimed at showing solidarity with Israel while also calling for restraint in its response to Hamas’ 7 October attack.
It was of “existential importance for Israel to remove the Hamas threat,” Rutte said in a statement after meeting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
But he added that the aid arriving in Gaza was “not nearly enough” and that “civilian casualties and regional escalation must be prevented.”
This requires restraint from Israel when it comes to the use of force. He also called for a return to talks on a two-state solution:
Though it may seem far away, peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians is only possible if prospects for a Palestinian state, alongside a secure Israel, are renewed.
On Pentagon’s military assistance to Israel, one of the officers leading the team is Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Glynn, who previously helped lead special operations forces against the Islamic State and served a high-profile role during intense combat in Falluja, one of the bloodiest and most controversial centers of battle for US forces during the war in Iraq.
Glynn will also be advising on how to mitigate civilian casualties during urban warfare, a US official told the Associated Press, on condition of anonymity.
Glynn and the other military officers who are advising Israel “have experience that is appropriate to the sorts of operations that Israel is conducting”, the national security council spokesman, John Kirby, said in a briefing at the White House.
Washington is concerned that Israel lacks achievable military objectives in Gaza and does not yet have a workable plan for a ground invasion, the New York Times has reported, citing senior officials in the Biden administration.
Defense secretary Lloyd J Austin has stressed the need for careful consideration of how a ground invasion would be conducted in conversations with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant, the paper wrote.
It added that Biden officials still insist they support an invasion and that they are not telling Israel what to do.
However the NYT also said that in conversations with Israeli officials about prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aim of eradicating Hamas, the Americans had not yet seen an achievable plan of action and there were concerns that a ground operation could be extremely bloody for civilians as well as troops.
Meanwhile, in a statement, former US President Barack Obama said that it is important that “Israel’s military strategy abides by international law, including those laws that seek to avoid, to every extent possible, the death or suffering of civilian populations”. He wrote: “Upholding these values is important for its own sake, because it is morally just and reflects our belief in the inherent value of every human life.
Upholding these values is also vital for building alliances and shaping international opinion, all of which are critical for Israel’s long-term security.”
He noted that this presented an “enormously difficult task”, one at which the US “had at times fallen short of.”
And after an attack that evoked “some of the darkest memories of persecution against the Jewish people”, Israeli citizens were understandably demanding their government do “whatever it takes to root out Hamas and make sure such attacks never happen again,” he said.
However, he continued: “In dealing with what is an extraordinarily complex situation where so many people are in pain and passions are understandably running high, all of us need to do our best to put our best values, rather than our worst fears, on display.
“That meant opposing anti-semitism and “efforts to minimize the terrible tragedy that the Israeli people have just endured as well as the morally-bankrupt suggestion that any cause can somehow justify the deliberate slaughter of innocent people”.
“It also meant rejecting anti-Muslim, anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian sentiment, he said.
“It means refusing to lump all Palestinians with Hamas or other terrorist groups. It means guarding against dehumanizing language towards the people of Gaza, or downplaying Palestinian suffering, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, as irrelevant or illegitimate.”
Obama observed that Israel’s siege and bombardment of Gaza risks backfiring and ultimately undermining long term efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region.
“Even as we support Israel, we should also be clear that how Israel prosecutes this fight against Hamas matters,” he stressed in the statement that also emphasised Israel’s “right to defend its citizens against such wanton violence”. He continued:
The world is watching closely as events in the region unfold, and any Israeli military strategy that ignores the human costs could ultimately backfire.
Thousands of Palestinians, including many children, had already been killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza, while hundreds of thousands had been forced from their homes, Obama wrote.
The Israeli government’s decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive civilian population threatens not only to worsen a growing humanitarian crisis; it could further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations, erode global support for Israel, play into the hands of Israel’s enemies, and undermine long term efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region.
Meanwhile, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi has said Beijing is “deeply concerned” by the escalating war between Israel and Hamas and called on Israel to respect humanitarian law in a phone call with his Israeli counterpart Eli Cohen, Chinese state media has reported.
All countries have a right to self-defence but China condemns all acts that harm civilians and opposes any violation of international law, Wang said, according to Xinhua.
The conflict affects the whole world, he added, and “involves a major choice between war and peace,” Xinhua wrote.
The painful lesson of the repeated cycle of Palestinian-Israeli conflict fully demonstrates: only adhering to the concept of common security can help achieve sustainable security, and only adhering to the direction of political settlement can facilitate the thorough resolution of Israel’s legitimate security concerns.
The two-state solution is the consensus of the international community.
Wang said he hoped both sides could consider “long-term interests of peace and security shared by future generations” and that they would resume peace talks.
