Israeli defense chief to visit Washington as tensions rise over Gaza war

Gallant’s visit, which the Israeli government said was at Austin’s invitation, comes after Blinken and Israeli leaders confronted one another over the trajectory of the war on Friday. On a trip to Tel Aviv, the top U.S. diplomat called on Israel not to invade the crowded city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, where nearly 1.5 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering, warning that “it risks further isolating Israel around the world and jeopardizing its long-term security.”

A separate Israeli delegation including Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and the head of the National Security Council, Tzachi Hanegbi, will also leave for Washington on Sunday, an Israeli official told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the schedule has not been made public.

The visit was requested by President Biden so officials could “hear U.S. concerns about Israel’s current Rafah planning and to lay out an alternative approach,” Sullivan told reporters last week.

On Sunday, Vice President Harris told ABC’s “This Week” that any military operation in Rafah “would be a huge mistake,” adding that the Biden administration had made that point clear “in multiple conversations and in every way.”

Israel has proposed moving displaced families in Rafah to “humanitarian islands” in other parts of the enclave. Harris said she had studied the maps and “there is nowhere for those people to go.” Asked whether there would be “consequences” from the United States for an Israeli operation in Rafah, she said, “I am ruling out nothing.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the nation late Sunday on the Jewish holiday of Purim, said: “It is impossible to defeat the sheer evil [of Hamas] by leaving it intact in Rafah. … We will enter Rafah and achieve total victory.”

Meanwhile, heavy fighting continued in other parts of southern Gaza Sunday. The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet, Israel’s military intelligence agency, launched an operation in the al-Amal neighborhood in Khan Younis, the IDF said in a statement. The operation involved airstrikes on about 40 targets, including military compounds and underground tunnels, the statement said. The IDF said its troops were “encircling the area and continuing to eliminate” militants.

Israeli forces were also operating in northern Khan Younis, in the al-Qarara area, the IDF said, saying troops killed militants with tanks and conducted airstrikes targeting facilities that it said were used by Hamas for weapons storage. The Washington Post could not independently verify the reports.

Fighting was also reported near health facilities in Khan Younis. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Sunday that Israeli forces were “besieging” al-Amal Hospital “amidst very intense shelling and heavy gunfire.”

The organization said Israeli forces were using bulldozers and smoke bombs around the hospital while demanding via drones that everyone inside evacuate. Earlier, the PRCS said one of its emergency services volunteers was killed “at dawn” by Israeli gunfire; before his death, the group said, the volunteer had reported “intense and continuous shelling” around the facility, as well as “continuous gunfire.”

The Post could not independently verify the claims. The IDF said it was not currently operating in hospitals in the al-Amal area and called on Hamas to “cease using hospitals” and other civilian infrastructure as shields. Gaza’s Ministry of Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In Gaza City, Israel said its raid of al-Shifa Hospital continued Sunday. The nearly week-long military operation has prompted alarm from global health officials and increasingly desperate appeals from patients and displaced residents trapped in the medical complex. Health services at al-Shifa, once Gaza’s largest and best-equipped hospital, were only recently restored to minimal levels, the World Health Organization said, after an Israeli attack on the facility in November. The Israeli military said its forces have apprehended 480 suspects in the latest raid and have “located weapons” and stockpiles of cash in the hospital.

• Israel told the United Nations it will no longer approve U.N. Relief and Works Agency food convoys to the north, said Philippe Lazzarini, the head UNRWA. “This is outrageous & makes it intentional to obstruct lifesaving assistance during a man made famine,” he wrote on X. Israel has denied restricting aid to Gaza. The United Nations and other aid officials say that without a cease-fire, the enclave faces an imminent famine.

• More than a dozen Democratic senators are calling on the Biden administration to reject Israel’s claim that it has not been violating international law by restricting humanitarian aid to Gaza. Israel sent assurances last week that its usage of U.S.-supplied weapons employed in Gaza had not violated international or U.S. laws. The State Department is working to assess whether Israel’s assurances are “credible and reliable.”
• U.N. Secretary General António Guterres reiterated pleas for a cease-fire during a visit to the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza on Saturday. “I want Palestinians in Gaza to know: You are not alone,” Guterres told reporters. On Friday, Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution at the U.N. Security Council that set out the “imperative of an immediate and sustained ceasefire” in Gaza.
• At least 32,226 people have been killed and 74,518 injured in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and says 252 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operation in Gaza.

Lior Soroka and Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.