The Biden administration has told the Israeli government that it wants the country to end its large-scale ground campaign in Gaza and transition to a more targeted phase of its war against Hamas, two U.S. officials familiar with the discussions told NBC News.
The officials stressed that White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan did not specify a timetable for this new phase of the war during his meeting Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At Thursday’s White House press briefing, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Sullivan spoke with Netanyahu about “the next phase of Israel’s military campaign, and he asked hard questions, as we have been doing, about what all that could look like.”
Kirby said that Sullivan “also discussed efforts Israel’s now undertaking to be more surgical and precise in their targeting and efforts that they are taking to help increase the flow of aid.”
The push comes as the death toll in the Gaza Strip approaches 20,000 — two-thirds of them women and children — according to local health officials. About 1,200 people in Israel were killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
Sullivan had “a heavy discussion” about civilian protection with Israeli officials during his trip to the region, a senior administration official said Thursday on a call with reporters.
"There was a discussion in these meetings — and also in our prior meetings and in calls between the president and the prime minister — on kind of shifts and emphasis from ... high intensity clearance operations, which are ongoing now, to ultimately lower-intensity focus on high-value targets, intelligence-driven raids and those sorts of more-narrow surgical military objectives," the senior administration official said.
Israeli officials have briefed U.S. officials on their "thinking of potential time frames," the official said.
