The Biden administration is concerned that Israel lacks achievable military objectives in Gaza and that the Israel Defense Forces is not yet ready to launch a ground invasion with a workable plan, senior administration officials said.
In telephone conversations with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III stressed the need for careful consideration of how Israeli forces could carry out a ground invasion of Gaza, where Hamas maintains complex tunnel networks under densely populated areas.
Biden administration officials insisted that the United States did not tell Israel what to do and yet supported the ground invasion. But the Pentagon has sent a three-star Marine, Lt. Gen. James Glynn, along with other officers to help the Israelis with the challenges of urban warfare.
A Pentagon official said Monday that Gen. Glynn’s deployment, which Axios previously reported, does not mean the Pentagon is making decisions for Israel. General Glynn, the official said, will not be on the ground in Israel if an invasion of Gaza begins.
Israeli officials in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But on Sunday, a diplomat at the Israeli Embassy denied that the US government had advised the Israelis to postpone the ground invasion. “The US is not pressuring Israel regarding the ground operation,” the diplomat said.
In his conversations with Mr. Gallant, Mr. Austin described the hard-fought campaign to clear the Iraqi city of Mosul of Islamic State fighters in 2016 and 2017. At the time, Mr. Austin was chief of the United States Central Command. and American troops supported their Kurdish and Iraqi counterparts in the fight.
“The first thing that everyone should know, and I think everyone knows, is that urban combat is extremely difficult,” Austin said Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week.”
He said he had “encouraged” Mr. Gallant “to conduct their operations in accordance with the laws of war.” American officials are increasingly concerned that a ground invasion of Gaza could result in a major loss of civilian life.
He spoke with Mr. Gallant again by phone on Monday, Pentagon officials said, emphasizing “the importance of civil defense.” In an emailed statement, Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said the two men also discussed American security assistance to Israel.
But the government is also concerned, the officials said, that the Israel Defense Forces does not yet have a clear military path to achieving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of rooting out Hamas. In conversations with Israeli officials since the Hamas attacks on October 7, American officials said they had not yet seen an actionable plan of action.
President Biden has publicly pointed this out. During his speech in Tel Aviv last week, he warned that Israel “needs clarity on goals and an honest assessment of whether the path taken will achieve those goals.”
American officials said Israel must decide whether, for example, to try to take out Hamas through surgical airstrikes combined with targeted strikes by special forces – as American warplanes and Iraqi and Kurdish troops did in Mosul – or whether to push into the Gaza Strip with tanks and infantry, as American Marines and soldiers, along with Iraqi and British forces, did in Fallujah in 2004.
Both tactics will result in heavy casualties, U.S. officials said, but a ground operation could be far bloodier for troops and civilians. At the Pentagon, many officials believe that the clearance operations in Mosul and Raqqa, Iraq, more than a decade after Fallujah, are a better model for urban warfare.
“One of the things we’ve learned is how to take civilians into account in the battle space, and they are part of the battle space, and we have to do what is necessary under the laws of war.” “Protect those civilians,” Mr. Austin said on Sunday.
But both Mosul and Raqqa caused significant civilian casualties. While these numbers can vary widely, the Associated Press puts the number of civilians killed trying to liberate Mosul from Islamic State fighters at between 9,000 and 11,000. And the Islamic State had only two years to prepare defenses in Mosul, argued Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute.
“Hamas has had 15 years to prepare a dense ‘defense in depth’ that includes underground, ground and surface fortifications, communications tunnels, emplacements and fighting positions,” Mr. Knights wrote in an analysis earlier this month, “as well as potential minefields, improvised explosive devices, explosively shaped anti-tank mines and buildings rigged as explosive booby traps.”
Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, called on Israel on Monday to postpone a ground invasion of Gaza to buy time for hostage negotiations, allow more humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians and give Israeli commanders more options Imposing fines – optimize your city battle planning.
“From an operational perspective, this is very complicated, and the more information you can gather and take your troops into urban combat, the better,” Mr. Reed said by phone from Cairo, where he and other senators were just finishing a trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt. “A little more time could be helpful. There are so many factors. It’s probably not the best approach to jump into.”
The Biden administration has given Israel the same advice. Like U.S. officials, Mr. Reed said he continued to support the ground invasion to destroy Hamas. But he warned that block-by-block fighting in Gaza was “a long-term effort,” noting that it took the Iraqi army, with support from the United States, nine months to drive the Islamic State out of Mosul.
Michael Crowley contributed reporting from Washington.