The Biden administration is concerned that Israel lacks achievable military objectives in the Gaza Strip, and that the Israel Defence Forces are not yet ready to launch a ground invasion with a plan that can work, senior administration officials said.
In phone conversations with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, defence secretary Lloyd Austin has stressed the need for careful consideration of how Israeli forces might conduct a ground invasion of Gaza, where Hamas maintains intricate tunnel networks under densely populated areas.
Biden administration officials insisted that the US had not told Israel what to do and still supported the ground invasion. But the Pentagon has sent a three-star Marine, Lieutenant General James Glynn, along with other officers to help the Israelis with the challenges of fighting an urban war.
A Pentagon official said on Monday that the deployment of Glynn, reported earlier by Axios, did not mean the Pentagon was making decisions for Israel. Glynn, the official said, would not be on the ground in Israel if an incursion into Gaza begins.
Israeli officials in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But on Sunday, a diplomat from the Israeli Embassy denied that the US government was advising the Israelis to delay the ground invasion. “The US is not pressing Israel in regards to the ground operation,” the diplomat said.
In his conversations with Gallant, Austin has described the hard-fought campaign to clear the Iraqi city of Mosul of Islamic State fighters in 2016 and 2017. At the time, Austin was the head of US Central Command.
“The first thing that everyone should know, and I think everyone does know, is that urban combat is extremely difficult,” Austin told ABC News’ This Week on Sunday. He said that he had “encouraged” Gallant to “conduct their operations in accordance with the law of war”. American officials have become increasingly concerned that a ground invasion in Gaza could lead to a huge loss of civilian lives.
He was on the phone again with Gallant on Monday, Pentagon officials said, emphasising “the importance of civilian protection”. In an emailed statement, Brigadier General Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said that the two men also discussed US security assistance to Israel.
But the administration is also concerned, the officials said, that the Israel Defence Forces do not yet have a clear military pathway to achieve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of eradicating Hamas.
In conversations with Israeli officials since the Hamas attacks on October 7, American officials said they have not yet seen an achievable plan of action.
President Joe Biden has alluded to that publicly. During his speech in Tel Aviv last week, he warned that Israel would need “clarity about the objectives and an honest assessment about whether the path you’re on will achieve those objectives”.
American officials said that Israel must decide whether, for instance, to try to take out Hamas by using surgical airstrikes combined with targeted raids by special operations troops — as US warplanes and Iraqi and Kurdish troops did in Mosul — or to roll into Gaza with tanks and infantry, as US Marines and soldiers, along with Iraqi and British forces, did in Fallujah in 2004.
Both tactics will result in heavy losses, US officials said, but a ground operation could be far bloodier, for troops and civilians. At the Pentagon, many officials believe that the Mosul and Raqqa clearing operations in Iraq more than a decade after Fallujah are a better model for urban warfare.
“One of the things we’ve learned is how to account for civilians in the battle space, and they are a part of the battle space, and we, in accordance with the law of war, we’ve got to do what’s necessary to protect those civilians,” Austin said on Sunday.
But both Mosul and Raqqa resulted in significant civilian casualties.
