On Tuesday’s broadcast of “CNN This Morning,” White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby stated that the White House succeeded in convincing Israel to “limit the scope of their operations” in northern Gaza and that while Israel is basically telegraphing its moves in southern Gaza, “We want them to do more to limit those civilian casualties.”
After playing video of President Joe Biden saying that Israel has to be careful about international opinion, co-host Phil Mattingly asked, “Admiral, you have made this point, top officials across the administration have made this point repeatedly, particularly over the course of the last several weeks. Can you point to specific evidence that your counterparts in the Israeli government have been listening to the concern?”
Kirby responded, “They have been, Phil, receptive to the message about civilian casualties and reducing damage to civilian infrastructure. So, here [are] just a couple of examples: And I’m not going to — I’ll caveat it by saying we know there’s more that needs to be done and the President talked about that last night. It’s something we constantly urge our Israeli counterparts to do, to be as careful and deliberate as possible, but, for instance, when they went into north Gaza, we sent over a couple of military generals with ground experience to talk to them about their plans. They had a much larger force planned. They went in with a much smaller force in a much more targeted way. I’m not suggesting they didn’t cause civilian casualties, of course they did, but they did limit the scope of their operations a little bit and went in in a more precise way. Then, in just recent days, they’re dropping leaflets, they’re publishing maps online to explain where the people of Gaza can go in the south where they can be more safe from combat operations. That’s basically telegraphing your punches. And there [are] not a lot of modern militaries that would do that, that would lay out a map for the whole world to see about where it’s safe to go and where it’s not safe to go. Again, Phil, I want to come back to what I said, we know there [are] too many civilian casualties. We want them to do more to limit those civilian casualties. Each one is a tragedy. We want the number to be zero and that’s what we’re going to continue to do and continue to press with our Israeli counterparts.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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